


tongues of mortals and angels

by Chiomi



Series: The Road to Corinth [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Blindfolds, Dirty Talk, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, From Sex to Love, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, Hand Jobs, Identity Reveal, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, Sex, Vaginal Fingering, basically this is consent porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-07-26 04:19:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 23,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7559821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He ran his hand down from her shoulder to the small of her back. “You know, there is a third option besides being alone and trying to be in a relationship with someone who’s not the one you want.”</p><p>Chat and Marinette are both in love with people who love other people, and decide to get casual with each other. It doesn't stay that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. without it I am nothing

**Author's Note:**

> So I heard y'all liked sin. Rating is for later stuff. Not tagged for underage because the age of consent is 15 in France and it's not a plot point. Not tied to anything specific, so feel free to head-canon them as aged up as makes you comfortable. Updates will be whenever, at no set length.
> 
> If at any point you notice my small reference, please come talk to me at uswe.tumblr.com rather than spoiling it for others in the comments. :)

Marinette was alone on the roof. Tikki had hung out while she finished her homework, but it was hard to wallow with your kwami there to cheer you up, and Marinette really wanted to just - get through the worst of it, so she could move on. She’d always known that she didn’t have much of a chance with Adrien, not with the way she couldn’t get out a real sentence around him. But she’d overheard him talking to Nino about how much he liked a girl he worked with. So not only did he already like someone, but she was a model. They’d probably get married and have beautiful model babies.

So Marinette sighed into the Paris night and draped herself dejectedly over the railing. She’d get over it, but bottling things up wasn’t good for anyone, not with the way Hawk Moth targeted people whose emotions had run over.

“What’s wrong, Princess?”

Marinette shrieked as she whirled around. She pressed a hand to her pounding heart and her mind raced through possibilities. Was there an akuma? Did he know who she was? “Chat! What are you doing here?”

He shrugged and hopped down from the chimney to walk along the balcony wall. “I was out in the city and thought I’d check on my favorite princess.” He stepped out from the edge of the wall and landed disconcertingly close to her on the balcony.

“Why were you out - was there a problem?”

He leaned on the railing next to her. “Not in the city. I just want to get out sometimes, be free. It’s easier to be myself as Chat than, well, who I am behind the mask.”

She turned to him, blinking. She never felt like herself with the mask on. Ladybug was so much more impressive than Marinette, and there were so many more expectations.

Chat let silence fall, then swayed towards her. “So, Princess, what’s wrong?”

Marinette made a face. “I just found out for sure today that the guy I like likes someone else.”

“Oh, no,” he said, and put his hand on her shoulder. “I know exactly how you feel, Princess, and it sucks. Do you want a hug?”

She paused, then nodded. “Yeah.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she slipped her arms around his waist in return. She let out a breath that shuddered unexpectedly, because it was so nice to be warm and pressed against someone who made her feel small. He might not know it at the moment, but he always had her back and made her feel safe. She tightened her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest. He smelled nice, too. “The stupid thing is,” she said into his suit, “I know I should try to move on and distract myself and not dwell on it, but I don’t think I could be in a relationship with anyone else. It wouldn’t be fair, and it’d be humiliating for everyone to explain why it wasn’t fair.”

Chat went very still, then pressed his face into her hair. “Yeah. It’s not a great position to be in.” He ran his hand down from her shoulder to the small of her back. “You know, there is a third option besides being alone and trying to be in a relationship with someone who’s not the one you want.”

It took her a moment to parse his suggestion. She tilted back to stare at his face. “What?”

His blush was visible in the light emanating up from the streetlamps. He was staring over her shoulder, and it seemed to take an enormous effort of will. “The only person I’ve ever kissed is Ladybug, and I don’t even remember it because I was cursed at the time. I’d really like to be able to remember my next kiss.”

Marinette felt her own blush rising. “And you’d want that with me?”

“Yes, Princess.” He was watching her steadily, and she thought it was one of the bravest things she’d ever seen him do. Being vulnerable on purpose in front of someone else could always hurt so much.

And - she’d never kissed anyone as herself. She wanted to. She rolled forward to stand on tiptoes so she could bring her face very close to his. “I’d like that,” she whispered, and kissed him.

It was a little too hard, at first, as they both leaned in, and she could feel the impression of his teeth behind his lips. They got the pressure right, though, and then it was lovely. She lifted her hand from his waist to cup his cheek and tilted her head to try out another angle. His arms tightened around her. She wasn’t sure how to breathe while kissing him, though, so she had to break for air. She smiled up at him, feeling kind of foolish. “I think this could be fun.” 


	2. Patient

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this will eventually earn the rating.

She saw Chat again the next day, but as Ladybug rather than herself. He didn’t come back to her as Marinette for days, and she thought he might regret his proposal. It was kind of embarrassing if he did regret it, because she’d agreed. She’d had her own doubts about the arrangement, but she knew she could trust him absolutely, which made it easier to feel good about.

Tikki seemed a little concerned about the level of deception involved, but she was still staunch in her stance that they should keep their identities secret, and had eventually wandered off muttering about teenage hormones. Tikki’s muttering was probably for nothing, though, considering he hadn’t come back.

It took an entire week for him to come back. She was working on a blazer commission for their neighbour when she heard a knock on the hatch to the roof. Marinette set the blazer and remaining buttons aside to go meet Chat on the roof. It was a clear night, not raining, and so it was easier in a lot of ways to meet him than to invite him in and past her bed. With the way things stood, that seemed too confusing an invitation to issue.

“Hey,” she said, pulling herself through the hatch.

“Hi, Princess,” he said, offering her a hand to help her to her feet.

“Hi,” she said inanely. Then, before she can think better of it, “Did you change your mind?”

His eyes widened. “No! I’m sorry I made you wait so long before I came back, but I was busy with civilian stuff, not unenthusiastic. I mean, if you still want to.”

Marinette’s anxiety faded to a buzzing anticipation. He hadn’t let go of her hand. “No, I - um. It would be nice? I liked kissing you.”

His smile was slow and sweet. “Can I kiss you again?”

“Yes,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him. There were no clashing teeth this time, just soft pressure of lips. She put a hand on his shoulder to help stabilize on her tiptoes, then broke the kiss. She frowned at him. It wasn’t as evident when they were fighting together or racing across rooftops, but she’d noticed his getting taller in the past few months. Marinette just hadn’t noticed that he was now a full head taller than her. It wasn’t fair! She wasn’t that short. “You’re too tall.”

“Sorry?” He looked amused.

“I want to be able to kiss you for ages without either of us getting a crick in our neck,” she said, looking around the balcony for a solution.

“I am very on board with that,” he said, letting go of her hand to run his palm up the outside of her arm. “What if you sat on the wall, and I stood between your legs?”

She blushed, and hoped he couldn’t see it in the darkness, though there was little hope of that while he was Chat. She was pretty sure she wanted him between her legs for more than just standing there and kissing. “Yeah, that sounds good.” Marinette skirted around him to hop up on the portion of wall not occupied by plants or railings. She wiggled until she was sitting as close to the edge as was comfortable, then held her hands out to him.

He laced their fingers together, hands warm even through his gloves. When he stepped closer, she could feel the same warmth against her inner thighs. Their faces were perfectly level like this, and Marinette tilted her head and drew him in by their joined hands. It was easier to kiss like this, sliding their lips together at angles based on preference rather than necessity. Marinette parted her lips and ran her tongue over the seam of his lips, flicker-fast.

Chat drew back, and Marinette worried for a moment that she’d overstepped. She bit her lower lip. He stared at her mouth, seemingly captivated. He blinked, then met her gaze.

Marinette asked, “Was that okay?”

“Definitely,” he said. “I just wanted to talk about - expectations. What do you want to do together?”

Marinette’s face flamed, because the fast answer, the one that was impulse and want and nothing of higher thought, was _everything_. She tightened her hands in his. “Um. I’m not sure? Lots more kissing. And I think I want you to touch me? Just . . . “

“Not yet.” He nodded, and brought up their joined hands to kiss the backs of hers. “I want lots of kissing and touching, too. But at a pace we’re both comfortable with, right? Because this is supposed to be fun, and it should stay fun.”

She leaned in to peck his cheek. “Definitely. And we tell each other what we want?”

“With no judgement,” he said, and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. It felt addictive, trading kisses back and forth while they talked. She could see how people spent hours just making out.

“No judgement,” she affirmed. “I want to try sticking my tongue in your mouth, and to see what it feels like when you stick yours in mine.”

His hands tightened on hers infinitesimally. She smiled. Talking through exactly what they wanted was going to be its own kind of fun.

“I want to try that, too. Can I bite your lip?”

She trapped her lip between her teeth and watched his eyes drop. “Yes.”

Their kiss felt hotter this time, both of them with lips parted and wet. He drew her bottom lip into his mouth and bit softly, adding just a hint of hard edge. Marinette’s gasp was quiet, but she knew he could feel as well as hear it. Suddenly desperate, she ran her tongue over his upper lip. He stopped biting and sucked her tongue into his mouth. She slid her tongue along his, then traced along his teeth. He slid his tongue into her mouth in return, and Marinette got distracted by the slide of their tongues against each other. It all felt unbearably intimate, even though they were only connected at their mouths and hands.

Her legs were still just hanging on either side of him. She wrapped them around him, bringing them closer together and absorbing more of the warmth radiating off him. He broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers. Chat unentangled their fingers, too, and Marinette hummed inquisitively.

He kissed her, quick and closed-mouthed, then just stared down at their hands. Marinette relaxed her arms and let him do what he would. He slid both hands up at the same time, keeping his claws well clear as he slid his fingers over the inside of her wrists over her pulse. She’d never thought her wrists could be an erogenous point, but she shivered at his touch.

When he reached her inner elbows, he switched his hands over so he could grip her waist. Marinette reached up with both hands to cup his face and kiss him again. Now that their hands were free, they drifted. Marinette threaded her fingers through Chat’s hair, using it as an anchor to find the minute changes in angle that felt best. Their tongues met again, and one of his hands slid up her back. It came to rest between her shoulder blades, holding her close.

Marinette hadn’t ever felt like this in company, and she never wanted it to end. Eventually, though, she heard a familiar beeping. “Dammit,” Chat said. “I should go.”

Marinette kissed him softly, finding it hard to let him go. “You’ll come back?”

He kissed the palm of her hand. “Always, Princess. Tuesday, if that works for you?”

“Yes. Nine o’clock?”

“I’ll be here,” he said, then scaled the chimney as another paw-pad beeped away.

Marinette sighed happily, then went back inside.


	3. Kind

Chat was right on time, landing on her roof at exactly 9pm. Marinette had hot cocoa waiting, still steaming in the October air, and she passed him a mug heaped high with whipped cream.

“You’re too kind, Princess.”

“It’s getting chilly out,” she said, and sipped her own mug.

“I’ll keep you warm,” he said, and his gaze was scorching as it ran over her.

A frisson of excitement ran up her spine, and her shiver had nothing to do with the weather. “Cocoa first,” she said firmly.

“Okay,” he said easily, and took her free hand, lacing their fingers together. She loved how casual he was about it, like being in physical contact with her was just a natural ground state.

She pressed up against his side. “So how was your day?”

He smiled down at her, then bent his head to kiss her. “Better, now that I can see you.”

She hid her answering smile in her cocoa. “Looking isn’t all you’re planning on doing, right?”

“Definitely not,” he said, and took a deep drink of his cocoa.

“So,” Marinette said, then stopped and nibbled her lower lip. It was a nervous habit, but she remembered how he’d reacted before and looked up at him through her lashes. He was staring at her mouth hungrily. She very deliberately ran her tongue over her bottom lip and watched him watch her. Marinette didn’t usually feel sexy, didn’t usually think about feeling sexy because it just wasn’t relevant, but having this kind of impact on Chat Noir made her feel triumphantly desirable. “Can I kiss you places other than your mouth?”

Chat gaped at her, and Marinette blushed. His mouth clicked shut. “Yes, Princess. Anywhere. I mean, I don’t think I can take any of the suit off? And no hickeys. But please do. Can I kiss your neck?”

In answer, Marinette drained the last of her cocoa and set aside the mug. She tugged Chat towards the wall that had equalized their heights before. She had to relinquish his hand to turn and face him and hop up, but then she stuck her fingers through his beltloops and pulled him towards her. “I am absolutely on board with that.”

He grinned at her, one of the mischievous ones she’d seen a lot as Ladybug. “But I’m not done with my cocoa.”

“That’s okay. You keep drinking,” she said, and leaned in to put her mouth on the thin strip of skin exposed over the top of his suit. He made a cracked noise, and she licked over his pulse. The hand that wasn’t on his mug rose to grip her hip. She kissed up to the hinge of his jaw, and his hand flexed on her. Marinette smiled against his skin. She pulled back, and tried to look innocent rather than lascivious. “Do you not like the cocoa?”

He gulped it down, then reached back to set it on the table. “It was delicious. In fact, I can’t get enough of the taste.”

He swooped in to kiss her, and there was no working up to it, just a meeting of open mouths. He tasted like her recipe for hot cocoa, his mouth warmer than usual. And wasn’t it nice, that she knew what it was usually like? Their kisses started slow and soft, tasting each other, but it was so easy to get lost. Part of Marinette wanted to let go of the suit, run her hands all over him, but they hadn’t talked about it. Talking about it would be the logical next step, but that would mean stopping kissing him, and that would be terrible. He ended the kiss, though, and Marinette made a wordless noise of protest.

Chat didn’t move away, though. He kissed the side of her neck, and oh, that felt nice. His mouth was hot and wet, his tongue tracing down the tendon on her neck towards the collar of her shirt. Marinette let out a breathy moan, and could feel his hips twitch against the backs of her fingers. He got to her collarbone and stopped, then nipped at her collarbone. Marinette gasped, arching her back towards him. “No marks,” she said, trying to remember why.

He started kissing his way back up her neck, and hummed his agreement.

She finally pulled herself together enough to ask, “Can I touch you?”

He hummed agreement again, right against her pulse, and she freed her hands from his belt loops. She slid them both up over his abs and chest to his shoulders, then back down. She might only be able to feel the suit, but it was thin, and he was all warm muscle beneath it.

He finally, finally brought his other hand in, bringing it to the back of her neck as he moved back to kiss her mouth. The kisses felt more urgent, gone from fun to desperate. When his Miraculous started to beep, she swore viciously.

He laughed unsteadily, and neither of them could resist a couple more kisses before he fled into the night. “Tomorrow, Princess."


	4. Isn't Jealous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this was written to Unkle’s Lonely Soul.

Patrol as Ladybug was different, because Chat seemed so much more - relaxed. He still flirted with her, but some of the playfulness was back, and she felt good that she was making him happier. It wasn’t the way he’d wanted, and he didn’t even know it was her, but what he wanted she couldn’t give as any of her selves. Their current arrangement was good. She got to make out with Chat nearly every night on her rooftop and still got to keep her partner.

She’d never thought there was so much variety in the way you kissed someone. But experimenting was letting her catalogue the vast array of different options, from sweet and slow to biting and rushed. She was spending enough time with her lips on Chat’s that she’d had to dig out her chapstick.

Marinette couldn’t say that Chat was the only one relaxed, either: Alya had noticed her persistent good mood.

“What’s got you so smiley?” Alya tilted her head towards Adrien and lifted her eyebrows.

Marinette looked down, shaking her head. “I’ve got a couple of projects going really well. It’s nice!”

“Okay,” Alya said, still looking curious.

“I’ll show you when i’m done! It’ll be cool.” Marinette did have a couple things she was working on for herself. She just hadn’t been working on them all that much recently.

“Cool,” Alya said, seemingly satisfied. Mme. Bustier walked in, and that was the end of that.

\--

The rain started that afternoon, and it felt like it was definitively starting the rainy season. It wasn’t raining hard, but steadily, and with no intention of letting up, like it was settling in for winter. They ended that night’s patrol when Chat’s Miraculous started beeping, because rain alone was no excuse. Ladybug would be worried about how fast it drained except she knew that Chat was exhausting his kwami by spending time with her. She thought maybe she should be jealous that he wasn’t prioritizing time with the version of her he professed to be in love with, but she wasn’t. Everything was just . . . good. She swung home, planning to put in some time on her projects. She had some embroidery she wanted to do on what was going to be a blouse eventually.

De-transforming didn’t dry her hair, so Marinette got a towel along with snacks for her and Tikki. She took her hair out of pigtails and dried it off as best she could, then combed it. It was still damp, but dry enough once she’d run the towel over it again. She set up her embroidery hoop and floss and scissors and was just deciding on a podcast to listen to when she heard a knock on the hatch. She blinked at Tikki. He knocked again, and Marinette set aside her embroidery hoop and shooed Tikki away to hide.

She started up the stairs, then remembered that she still had a towel around her neck. She scrubbed it quickly over her hair, then tossed it over the back of her desk chair and darted up the steps to the loft.

Chat crouched on her roof, grinning down at her. She rolled her eyes at him, but couldn’t suppress a grin. “Come in, Chat.”

He dropped down onto her bed and she closed the hatch behind him, which put them very close together. He smelled like petrichor, and his hair dripped on her shoulder. “Thanks for giving me refuge from the rain, Princess.”

“Of course,” she said, and ran her fingers through his wet hair, pushing it back from his face. Even sodden it was soft. “You’re all wet.”

He leaned in to kiss her softly in greeting. “Could I please borrow a towel?”

“Yeah, let me just -” It occurred to her that she had posters of Adrien up all over her room. She hadn’t told Chat who she was in love with, and it just seemed rude to have Adrien’s face all over everything when Chat was in her bed. “Just stay here. I’ll be right back.”

She grabbed the towel off her chair, because she didn’t want to keep him waiting too long and it wasn’t that damp. When she got back up the stairs, he was sitting at the edge of her bed, and with his hair pushed back like that he looked kind of like Adrien. She handed him the towel and sat down on the bed next to him, then scooted up towards the head. “Just put it over the railing when you’re done.”

He stilled a moment, then ran the towel over his suit perfunctorily. He draped the towel over the loft railing and turned to face her, edging up the bed to sit closer to her. “So hi.”

“Hi,” she said, smiling. “Kiss me?”

He threaded his fingers through her loose hair and leaned in to kiss her. His lips were cold and rain-wet still, but they warmed quickly once teeth and tongue were brought to bear. It was an awkward angle, though, with both their legs between them. Chat broke away. “Do you want to lie down?”

It would be more intimate than they’d been before, but Marinette decided abruptly that she wanted that. Kissing him so much made her want things, and there was no reason not to ask for them. “Yes,” she said, and started to arrange the pillows.

Chat crawled up the bed and helped, then flopped down on his side and stared up at her. She kissed him quickly, then lay down facing him so they were eye to eye. She could feel the long line of him all down her front. Kissing like this proved more awkward than expected; she giggled the third time their noses bumped.

“Something funny, Princess?” She couldn’t actually see his eyebrows through the mask, but the way it moved suggested he was raising one eyebrow at her.

She kissed him quickly. “I’m glad we get to figure out all the awkward bits together. Also, you should touch me.”

“Yeah?” He looked suddenly very interested, and had no problems getting their noses out of the way when he kissed her again. “Show me where?”

Oh. That sounded - well, perfect. She rolled slightly away from him and set her hand on the outside of her thigh. His gaze dropped to follow her hand, and he brought a hand up to her leg as if magnetized. She drew her hand up slowly, over the curve of her hip to the dip on her waist and then in over her stomach and up, up. She paused over her breast and squeezed lightly - to feel it, and so her intention would be unmistakable. Chat met her gaze, and looked almost drugged, his pupils almost human-round instead of slitted. Marinette bit her lip and offered, “If you want to?”

“God, yes,” he said, and rolled into her to close the distance and kiss her heatedly. His mouth was hot and nearly frantic on hers, but his hand stayed slow. It dragged up her hip and in over her waist, places he’d touched before unthinking. When he slid his hand in over her stomach, almost exactly following the path her hand had taken before, he hesitated, both hand and mouth.

She used the hand she had threaded through his hair to draw him back enough to say, “Only if we’re both ready, right?”

“You’re gorgeous,” he said, and cupped her breast.

Bra and shirt and glove in the way, it was still the most intimately anyone had ever touched her, and Marinette gasped in the close warm space between their mouths. He tightened his hand on her, then seemed to realize he might hurt her and let go. She arched her back to bring his hand back in contact. He slid his thumb back and forth, and a high-pitched noise got caught in her throat. Chat looked back up at her face, and she drew him in for another kiss.

Even the minimal space between their bodies felt like too much, and Marinette wrapped her leg around Chat’s, bringing him in closer. The proximity meant that not only could she feel his legs and hips against her, but also a warm bulge against her thigh. She’d made him hard, just with her mouth and having him touch her with her clothes on. It was a heady feeling. She ran a hand down his back to his waist and applied just the slightest pressure, twitching her hips towards him at the same time.

He moaned into her mouth, and his hand flexed on her breast, claws piercing her shirt. He broke away. “Shit, I’m sorry.” He stroked over her breast as if trying to smooth the punctures out of her shirt, but it was mostly highly distracting.

She took her hand from his back to lace her fingers with his and still his hand. “It’s okay. It’d be nice if you could be claw-free, though.”

He kissed the back of her hand and each of her fingers, which felt as intimate as his touch had. “I’ll ask. I don’t know how much of the suit I can be without and still have the transformation hold.”

She brushed her lips against his. “When do you think you can come back?”

His face fell. “I have obligations until Friday. Friday night?”

“Oh, that sucks. I have a movie date with my best friend on Friday. Are you free Saturday?”

“Not until late.”

She brushed her lips against his again, and nipped his lower lip. “Then come late. I’ll be here.”

“I look forward to it, Princess.”


	5. Doesn't brag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, do y’all want plot? ‘Cause right now we’re looking at another 12 chapters of sex and feelings, but the thing I’m using for structure also has room in it for expansion, so if anyone was feeling particularly plot-starved here I could make it more like 14-18 chapters of sex, feelings, and - idk, probably something traumatizing, knowing me.

Saturday night, Marinette was torn between getting ready for bed at her normal time and waiting in her regular clothes for Chat. In the end, comfort won out, as well as the thought of what his hands would feel like with a few fewer layers between them. So she brushed her teeth and washed her face and put on sleep pants and a tank top.

Tikki floated next to the mirror as Marinette combed her hair. “I think you should tell him, Marinette.”

“But things are so good as they are!”

“I think you’d be surprised.” Tikki sagged in defeat, and dropped a couple inches. “I won’t tell before you’re ready, but I think you’d be happier.”

Marinette put away her comb and cupped her hands to hold Tikki. She kissed the crown of her head. “It’ll be okay.”

She stayed at her desk working on homework until that was done, but then it was getting late. She put everything away and then stopped, staring at one of the posters of Adrien she had on the wall. He was her perfect prince, and it wasn’t even like he was away in some distant tower. She saw him almost every day, and he wasn’t just perfect to look at, he was smart and kind and perfectly polite. Well, she wouldn’t want to invite Adrien up with all the posters on the walls, either. The photos she’d taken herself could stay - she had photos of all her friends. But she didn’t need Chat to know who she was in love with. He’d probably understand, but a small part of her was irrationally afraid he’d dismiss it as a celebrity crush and unimportant. He’d never want to hurt her like that.

Still: she rolled the posters and secured them with an elastic band.

She turned out the lights except for the one next to her bed and crawled under the covers to read on her phone. Sunday mornings she didn’t have to get up early, so she could wait more or less indefinitely for Chat to show up.

He had perfect timing; she was just finishing Every Heart A Doorway when she heard a knock on the skylight. It was a clear night, but she was already so cozy, so she just said, “Come in.”

He dropped down on the bed, and while she was closing the hatch he spread out, hands behind his head and legs crossed like he’d been there for hours. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Princess.”

She kissed him in greeting, keeping it light. “It’s okay, I kept myself entertained.”

His grin was absolutely filthy. “Yeah? How so?”

Marinette didn’t even try not to grin in return. “Not like I usually do after you leave.”

“Oh, now there’s an interesting subject.”

“I could show you? Or I could show you how, if you wanted.” Marinette’s voice dropped low on the second part, entirely out of her control. She realized that her position on the bed, on her hands and knees in the mussed covers, gave him a good view down her tank top if he just raised his head a bit. She twisted her elbows closer together, she hoped imperceptibly, to show herself to best advantage. She didn’t consider her breasts anything to brag about, but they were nice enough, and he’d liked them last time.

His eyes gleamed, and he abandoned his forced casualness to sit up and kiss her, tangling a hand in her hair. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and tangled his with it, seeming to want to get as much of her as possible as fast as feasible. The position was awkward, though, and they had to break for air eventually. “I very much want. Probably a good time to tell you I found out I can take one glove off, yeah?”

She bit his bottom lip. “A very good time, or this plan wouldn’t really get off the ground. There are some places I’m just not okay with claws.”

“Okay, so how do we do this?” He looked around her bed.

Marinette bit her own lip, and tried to ignore him as he went still, fixated on her mouth. “Maybe if you sat up against the headboard and I sat between your legs?”

He complied, rearranging her pillows so he was comfortable. It left him half under her covers, which felt like a huge step. They’d been on her bed before, but not really in it. She crawled towards him, and he spread his legs so she could settle between them. Spreading his legs revealed he was already hard, and she stared at his dick, pressed so obviously against the tight-fitting suit. She only realized she was staring when he shifted slightly. “I can put a pillow in my lap if that’d make you more comfortable.”

“No,” she blurted out. Then, more softly, and dragging her gaze up to his face. “No. I’m asking you to finger me until I come. I want to feel what that does to you.”

“Fuck, Marinette,” he said, almost reverent.

She smiled, and sat between his legs, making sure to wriggle against him as she settled in. He brought his hands to her waist to hold her still and pull her torso in more firmly to his chest. “Can I take your shirt off? Can I touch you?”

His breath on her ear made her shiver. She sat up away from him and skimmed off her tank top, throwing it to the foot of the bed. “Yes,” she said, settling back against him. The texture of the suit was strange against her bare skin, but his chest was nice and warm beneath it. Chat leaned in close, breath hot on the junction between her neck and shoulder. That feeling more than the cool air of the room made her nipples hard.

He skimmed his hands up at the same time, bringing both his hands to cup her breasts. Not moving his hands, he skimmed his lips over her shoulder and up her neck.

Marinette sighed happily and tilted her head to give him better access. “Which glove can you take off?”

Instead of answering verbally, he closed his mouth on her earlobe and held his left - ringless - hand up. His right hand stayed superglued to her breast, starting to gently squeeze and release like a cat kneading.

The effervescence in her blood made her hands not quite steady as she stripped off his glove, but she could still bring his bare hand up to her mouth to nip at the pad of his index finger. His hand twitched, his finger crooking into her mouth. Certain things would always be an impossibility if he wanted to keep his identity secret, but she could make him think and wonder and want, probably. She licked his finger, then sucked it deep into her mouth, making sure to get it very wet. His dick twitched against her backside, and he stopped his ministrations to her neck to whisper, “Fuck.”

She smirked, then threaded her fingers through his so that she was driving where his hand went. She drew their hands down her sternum. “Normally, right after you leave, I’m pretty worked up, so I don’t waste any time.” He dipped a finger into her bellybutton of his own volition, and she set her head back on his shoulder in approbation. She liked that this could still be play. “Sometimes I don’t even bother to get undressed, just slide my hand into my pants just like this.”

She was glad she was wearing her pyjamas, because the pants were loose enough to slide their hands in easily. She found herself holding her breath as she guided their joined hands down to where she was already wet. Marinette felt like she might burst just from the first brush of his fingers. His fingers were clumsy, though, and the first press of nail edged the feeling off. She finally took a shaky breath. Loosening her grip on his hand, she let her fingers slide freely between his. Down to tease and pick up moisture, slowly up again to trace around her clit. His fingers followed hers, and it was strange and alien and thrilling to have someone else’s hand on her. One finger dipped shallowly into her, and it was like lightning shooting through her. She jolted against him and gasped. Moving against him only highlighted how still he was. His breath still came hot against her neck, but the rest of him was coiled taut, all of his attention focused downward. He dragged his finger up slowly, coming to a stop when he found her clit. “Is this?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, leaving him to it. She brought her hand up to her breast, rolling her nipple between her thumb and index finger. The other hand she anchored in his hair to give her something to hold on to.

His fingers were tentative and exploratory, getting to know every dip and fold of her. It would be maddening, but he came back to her clit often enough that she didn’t lose the edge of her arousal. It did back off, though, when his nail caught on her. She twitched upright, hand flying down to still his. “Watch your nails,” she gasped out.

“Shit, sorry, Princess,” he said, pressing apologetic kisses to her neck. Deliberately careful, he stroked the pad of his index finger over her clit. “I’ll cut them. For now, though - I’m right-handed. Could I, maybe, use my mouth on you instead?”

Marinette let out a whimper, her hips arching helplessly. “Yes. Please.”

She scooted away from him so he could get out from behind her, and so she could lay down once he was gone. Arching her hips clear of the bed, she shoved down her sleep pants. When they got past where she could comfortably reach, Chat took over, drawing them down her legs and away. She was completely naked in front of him. Completely naked, and he just crouched there, staring.

She extended a hand to him in a silent plea. He took it, and slid sinuously up her body to kiss her. The kiss was desperate, his tongue insistent, and she threw her free arm around his shoulders to keep him pressed close. The hard line of his dick was pressed just inside her iliac crest, so, so close to where she wanted stimulation. The texture of the suit against her naked skin was more than she’d expected, and she shivered. She slid her hand down, tracing over the edge of his shoulderblade and then down his spine. When she drew back from the kiss, he followed for a moment, then retreated, staring at her with hooded eyes. She bit her lip, then said, “Please?”

“Yes,” he breathed, then pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. He kissed a trail down her neck and chest, pausing to press wet kisses to each of her breasts before continuing to arrow down. He had to let go of her hand to keep sliding himself down rather than rise to his hands and knees and back up, but he settled between her legs like he belonged there.

Marinette spread her thighs wider to accommodate his shoulders. It let his hot breath ghost over her. He leaned in and swept his tongue over her, and the sensation was so overwhelmingly new that she shuddered. He lifted his head to look at her. “Okay?”

She nodded frantically, and saw realization cross his face: he knew why she’d shuddered. He grinned wickedly and set his mouth to her again. He licked and sucked and thrust his tongue into her until she was writhing, and then set his lips around her clit and _sucked_. Her hips bucked under him and she whimpered.

He lifted his head again, and that was terrible, why did he keep doing that? “You like that, Princess?”

“Yes, yes, please,” she babbled, and she’d never felt so out of control in her life. But he was there to catch her. He wrapped his lips around her clit again and sucked lightly, swirling his tongue around. Everything in her coiled tighter, from her toes to her fingertips, and she crossed her ankles behind his back. The liquid tension built, stringing her tight. “Please, finger, please, please,” she said, inarticulate at the edge of sanity.

He slid a finger into her carefully, and all the tension in her body coalesced, clenching down on him. She had to bite the side of her thumb to keep in a moan as she flew apart.

He didn’t stop, slowly thrusting that single finger in and out. Marinette reached down and pet his hair, trembling in the aftershocks. His whole body was moving as he continued to lick at her, hips grinding against the bed. Then he stiffened and shuddered, too, his hand stilling and his mouth going slack.

His ring, resting against her thigh, gave an outraged beep. He laughed, and Marinette’s hips twitched. He pressed a last kiss to her, then started kissing his way back up her body, quick this time. When he was face to face with her, carefully holding his hips away from her, he said, very grave, “I think I may have pissed off my kwami by finishing in the suit.”

Marinette giggled helplessly and kissed his cheek. “You should probably go placate him, then.”

He smiled, and brushed his cheek against hers affectionately. “Did you?”

“Yes, absolutely,” she said, and chanced kissing him on the mouth. He tasted - well, he tasted of her, she guessed, and the thought made her face flame. “And we should do this again sometime if you’re up for it, but right now you’re on a time limit.”

“Right,” he said, and reached for the hatch. He reversed direction and grabbed his glove, tucking it into his belt, then hauled himself onto the roof. He leaned his head back in. “Good night, Marinette.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with comment fic: http://archiveofourown.org/comments/70344745


	6. Isn't Arrogant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s comment fic on the last chapter. http://archiveofourown.org/comments/70344745 Also, the consensus seems to be that plot is unnecessary, so we’re gonna stick to the initial outline. I'd apologize for this taking so long, but I said at the start that there'd be no fixed schedule, so *shrug*.

Adrien seemed more stilted with Marinette on Monday, not that she’d have noticed if she didn’t pay so much attention to him. He didn’t seem to be any more awkward with anyone else, which gave rise to the horrible fear that he’d found out about her crush. The awkwardness faded over the course of the day, though, and Marinette could breathe a sigh of relief. It was probably arrogant of her to think he paid that much attention to her, and she was projecting her own weird feelings about having sex with someone else. She should probably feel seedy or something about having casual sex with someone she wasn’t in love with, was keeping secrets from. But she just . . . didn’t. They were both keeping secrets, but they weren’t hurting anyone.

Alya came home with her for lunch, and they took sandwiches and pastries up to her room. Marinette only remembered that they should maybe have stayed downstairs at the last moment, when Alya was already looking around the room. “What, you suddenly fall out of love with Adrien’s face?”

Marinette whined, “Alya.”

Alya smirked at her. “No, I think it’s a good thing. Maybe if he’s not literally larger than life all over the place you’ll be able to talk to him.”

Marinette put down her plate so she could bury her face in her hands. “It’s not like that! He just - he just _is._ ”

“Oh, honey, eat your lunch.”

\--

Chat knocked on the hatch to the roof while Marinette was still working on homework. She just called, “Come in!”

The stupid Chem equations weren’t going to balance themselves, and Marinette had almost figured it out. Probably. Maybe? It didn’t look like there was supposed to be that much hydrogen. She made notes on the problem, and a little arrow to the side so she could write ‘ask Alya!!!’ where she’d notice it. She couldn’t hear Chat behind her, of course, because he was silent on his feet, but she could feel him when he came up behind her. He put his hands on the arms of her chair and leaned in over her.

She tilted her head back to look at him, and he was very close. “Homework is terrible.”

He kissed her forehead. “Poor Princess.”

She let her head fall back against the back of the chair and closed her eyes for a moment. She was mostly done, and could finish it in the morning. This was way better. She leaned forward again and put away her homework in her backpack, then stood to face Chat. A blush rose on her face, entirely without her permission. She thought he was blushing a little, too. But there was no reason to be awkward, right? Getting off together was kind of the point, and it had been nice. She put her hands on either side of his face and drew him down to kiss. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, and his suit was chilled from being outside.

When she drew back, she smiled at him and slipped her hands down so her fingers were laced together behind his neck. “Hi.”

He swooped in to kiss her again, just a quick peck. “Hi.”

She took a quarter-step forward. “Sit on the chaise?”

He backed up without looking, letting her steer him. When he sat, it was more of a thump as a knee knocked into the edge and he just kind of folded along that axis.

Marinette giggled, then asked, “Can I sit on your lap?”

“Definitely, Princess,” he said, and turned so he was more properly on the chaise and balance would be easier.

She straddled him, settling down on his thighs. He really was skinny: all of their legs fit easily on the chaise. He brought his hands up to her hips to hold her steady. She slid forward until they were chest to chest, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Letting things develop without talking about them was the coward’s way out, and being a coward was already how she’d failed to ask Adrien out before he fell for a coworker. She kissed him, liking the new angle of being slightly above him, then sat back. “Would you want to rub off on me?”

His hands flexed on her hips, but then he blushed bright red. “I -uh.” He leaned forward to rest his head on her shoulder. “I had to promise I wouldn’t come in the suit again,” he mumbled.

“Oh,” Marinette said. Her eyebrows drew together. It had only newly been on the table, but would he want to stop their arrangement if he couldn’t get off again? Or, worse, would he want to reveal his identity?

He lifted his head, stretching his neck to brush his cheek against hers as he straightened to meet her gaze. “But, I mean, I cut my nails and switched which hand my ring is on. So I could try fingering you again, if you want?”

Marinette smiled and kissed him, running her tongue over the seam of his lips. “I’d like that.”

She backed away off him, and he seemed reluctant to let go of her hips. She stood, and shimmied out her pants and panties at the same time. She hesitated, then stripped off her shirt, too. Chat leaned forward, eyes intent on her, as she unclasped her bra as well. She had to raise her eyebrows pointedly and nod down to where his hands were tight on the arms of the chaise before he recovered himself and stripped the glove off his right hand.

Tremendously conscious of how her body looked in the light from her desk and the fading sun, Marinette straddled him again. She walked on her knees up the chaise and leaned down to kiss Chat again. His bare hand felt hot and soft on her waist, and his mouth was hungry. As they kissed, his hand slid down her hip, down the outside of her thigh to her knee. When his hand started tracing up her inner thigh, she had to break away and breathe. His hand was moving so slow. When it was close to where she wanted it, Marinette found herself arching towards him, ending up pressing her breasts into his suit.

Chat kissed the side of her neck. “Can I lick your tits?”

She hated that word. She liked his mouth, though. “Yes.”

He started kissing his way down her chest, but stopped when his hand finally reached its goal. He slid one long finger into her, and her breath hitched. He retracted it and traced up to her clit, circling it slowly. Her hips twitched, and he pressed a wet kiss to the side of her breast. He slid his finger back and forth, and his touch was light and exploratory.

Marinette ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and slid the other down his back. Even if she couldn’t touch skin, she could touch him. He slid his finger fully into her, and she murmured into his hair, “Another.”

He let out a shuddering breath that gusted hot over her bare skin. “Anything you want, Princess.” He slid another finger into her, and she hadn’t been thinking about how their hands were different sizes. His fingers were longer than hers, and the angle was substantially different. He moved his mouth, too, wrapped his lips around her nipple. It was a lot, all at once, and she moaned, hand tightening in his hair.

He slowly pumped his fingers in and out of her, and she pressed her face to the top of his head. His cat ears were strangely warm against her cheek. He switched his attention to her other breast. The sensation of it - the novelty of having someone else’s hands on her, someone else’s mouth - was going to send her over the edge even without any attention to her clit. It made Marinette feel just at the edge of control. Not like she normally did, where gravity was constantly on the verge of winning their ongoing argument, but wilder. She clutched him tighter.

It didn’t take long for her to start rolling her hips, trying to resist the instinct to grind against him. That seemed to clue something in Chat, and he brought his thumb up to brush against her clit. Trying to do more things at once disrupted his rhythm, but she’d found her own, and it didn’t take her long to come. When she did, she moaned louder than maybe was prudent with her parents two floors below, then sort of fell forward against Chat.

His fingers stilled, still inside her. He brought up his still-gloved hand to gently scrape her bangs back from her face. “Can you come again?”

Her hips twitched, sending his fingers deeper. She gasped, then stroked her fingers through his hair in an effort to calm them both. “Yeah, but it’s late and I have school.”

He pressed a kiss to her collarbone and said, “Okay.”

He slid his fingers out of her and she sat back, then blushed at how wet his hand was. “Oh, I’ll, um, let you wash up.”

She tried to stand, but her knees wanted to be jelly instead, and she staggered until Chat caught her elbow. Marinette smiled at him. Unsteadiness aside, she felt really, really nice. She leaned down to grab her clothes, listing only a little, and just dropped them all in the hamper. She was going to bed soon anyway. When she turned back to the center of the room, intent on grabbing pyjamas, Chat was still in the exact same spot. His gaze snapped up to hers, embarrassment lurking somewhere under the mask. It was kind of cute, that after he’d seen her completely naked with her complete consent he was still shy of being caught staring at her ass. Marinette glanced pointedly at the sink.

He rose to his feet, and the bulge in the front of his suit was - noticeable. Prominent, even. He walked awkwardly to the sink as Marinette grabbed pyjamas and put them on. It sucked that he couldn’t come in his suit, and felt kind of one-sided. But he was obviously turned on, and he’d presumably tell her if he had a problem with their arrangement. Marinette was taking out her pigtails when she felt Chat come up behind her, and turned before he could touch her. “Since time’s a factor, can I come back on Saturday night and see how many times I can make you come?”

Marinette put her hands on either side and drew his face down to kiss. “Yes,” she said, and then, “Goodnight, Chat.”


	7. Isn't rude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has the scene that spawned this whole idea. Also - and not promising anything - what would people think of an Adrien-POV companion piece that is 0% sex, 95% awkwardness and Adrien accidentally having a feeling, and 5% hints about the structural inspiration?

Saturday morning, Marinette was up at dawn to fight an akuma. Then, bruised and cranky, she had to go pretend she’d just woken up for her shift at the bakery. By the time she was free after the lunch rush, she was really looking forward to Chat’s visit later. She just - wanted to feel good, not frazzled. Working on a couple designs helped her feel better, but she wasn’t at the point of sewing anything, and sewing was what really helped her de-stress.

It got dark early, late in October, but Marinette still took it as an excuse to get ready for bed. She didn’t particularly want a lot of layers between her and Chat when he arrived. It was tempting, momentarily, to try to dress sexy, in a lacy camisole or something, but that felt silly. All of the lace she owned was either in with her fabric odds and ends or a result of her painstaking experiments with bobbins, and she didn’t want it to sit crumpled on the floor for any period of time. She climbed into her bed in normal sleep pants and a tank top, with a book to keep her occupied.

He didn’t keep her waiting very long. She didn’t hear him land, not really, but there was a sensation of presence that was then justified by his knock on the hatch. She rose up on her knees to let him in, and he leaned in to kiss her enthusiastically before she even had it open all the way.

She sat back, giggling, and he leaned farther in, somersaulting onto the bed. Somehow, miraculously, none of his flying limbs hit her. Hair even messier than usual, he looked up at her from her bed. “Is that okay? Like, we haven’t talked about it really, but I really like kissing you.”

Marinette leaned in and kissed him in answer. “I like kissing you, too. And I kind of like that it’s casual, now?”

His smile seemed a little tight at the corners, but he was still smiling. “That’s kind of the point, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, and tucked her loose hair behind her ear. “Are you getting what you want out of this? Since you can’t - um.”

His smile relaxed, and he reached over to tuck her hair behind her other ear. “Can I talk dirty to you, Princess?”

She nodded, and he leaned in to kiss her. He slipped his tongue into her mouth, escalating the kiss dizzying fast. He broke it, then kissed a path from the corner of her mouth over to her ear. “When I got home, I could still taste your skin, and those little noises you make were still echoing in my ears, and I used the hand I’d had inside you to jerk off. I came so hard I saw stars.” He nipped her earlobe. “So yeah, if we could ever make the logistics work, and you’d be down, I would really, really like to fuck you, but I’m getting what I want out of this. I like making you come.”

Marinette fisted her hand in his hair and used it as leverage to draw him back far enough that she could kiss him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and fell backwards so they were both laying down in a sprawl of limbs. Marinette giggled, then kissed him again.

Chat ran his hands down her sides and down over her hips. When he ran his hands back up, he brought them under her shirt, edging it upwards. She liked the feel of his clawtips on her skin, the faint prickling sensation almost as much as the knowledge of how careful he was being. Marinette knew better than most how easily they could rend pretty much anything, but there wasn’t even a hint of pain. He drew it up halfway before being pressed against him kept it stuck, so Marinette sat up and finished stripping it off, dropping it on the bed beside them.

Before she could resume kissing him, Chat asked, “Can I go down on you now?”

“Yes,” she said immediately, redirecting. She lay on her back and started to strip off her sleep pants.

Chat rolled over and scooted down so he was kneeling between her legs. He took over drawing down her sleep pants, and leaned in to nip at the vulnerable skin of her inner thigh, making her shiver. “Cold, Princess?”

“No,” she said. Her skin was hypersensitive with anticipation, but she wasn’t cold. She ran her fingers through his hair.

He caught her hand and brought it around so he could kiss her palm. Already naked and anticipating, it was that tender gesture that sent a frisson of excitement down her spine. He smiled up at her. With her sleep pants gone, he ran his hands up her inner thighs, and she parted them further so he could settle more easily between them. “Good,” he purred. “I wouldn’t want anything to discomfit or distract you for the next, say, hour?”

Marinette felt her eyes go round, and her knees involuntarily started to close around his torso. He’d said last time he wanted to make her come more than once, but that seemed ambitious - and fun. “Oh,” she breathed. “Yes, please.”

His eyes positively gleamed, and then he lowered his face, biting a trail slowly up the inside of her leg. When he reached the apex of her thighs, he paused and just breathed on her. The puff of warmth and gnawing anticipating elicited a sudden gush of wetness. Marinette ran her hands over his arms and shoulders and upper back - anything she could reach except his head, because it seemed exceptionally rude to just shove him face first where she wanted him.

He ran his hands up her thighs again, then settled them on her hips, holding her in place. Chat finally put his mouth on her, going straight for her clit. Her hips twitched, but couldn’t move too far with the way he already had her anchored.

He licked at her, sucked, stuck his tongue in her. She stroked his shoulders until it felt like she was getting close, but then she got to that edge and stayed there and stayed there. Marinette was used to her own hand - to having her own fingers inside her - and just his mouth was different enough that she plateaued and just stayed there for a while. Her orgasm, when she came, was almost a relief.

But then he didn’t stop, didn’t even slow. Marinette fisted her hands in the comforter as her second orgasm came hard on the heels of the first. She crossed her ankles behind his back. He ran his thumbs over her iliac crests and lifted his head. She whined at the loss and twitched her hips up towards him. Very softly, he bit the tendon right at the top of her thigh. “Am I doing good, Princess?”

“Yes,” Marinette said, and almost didn’t recognize her own voice. She licked her lips and tried again. “Yes, fuck.”

He lapped softly at her clit, then held up his ringless right hand. “Take my glove off?”

She fumbled for the edges of his glove, hands unsteady. His mouth distracted her from moving very effectively, but she got the glove off. He slipped a finger into her, and she moaned. She slid her hands up to her breasts and squeezed them. He added a second finger and fucked them in and out of her, keeping his mouth on her clit. He drove her up, and up, and she came again. Everything started to blur together as she drowned in sensation. Her moan as she came a fifth - sixth? - time was almost a sob.

Chat left his fingers in her, but lifted his head. “Should I stop?”

“I - I -” He started drawing his fingers out, moving very slowly, and a shudder raced down her whole body.

He kissed the top of her pubis, then right under her belly button. “I’m guessing that’s a yes?”

“Y-yeah,” Marinette managed to get out, voice thick. “Would you mind grabbing my water bottle? It’s on my desk.’

He kissed right above her belly button. “Yeah, be right back.”

He was halfway down the stairs when she remembered. “The light switch is on your left.”

“Nah, Princess, your light up there is plenty. Cats can see in the dark.”

Marinette laughed. She couldn’t quite feel her legs. She heard the sink run, then stop, then run again. It turned off, and he climbed back up to her. He passed her the water bottle, and it felt heavy and awkward and she nearly hit herself in the face bringing it to her mouth.

Chat grabbed her pants from somewhere and set them next to her. He pushed back a piece of hair that had stuck to her sweaty skin, then kissed her cheek. “I hate to cut and run, Princess, but I kind of want to go jerk off while I can still taste you.”

Marinette smiled, and thought she might blush if her circulatory system weren’t so confused. She made a shooing motion towards the hatch. “Go.”


	8. Doesn’t seek its own advantage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am incredibly weak, so this is now a two-part series, with Adrien’s POV in the other work.

Marinette woke up from a dream where Chat found out she was Ladybug and fled to England because she’d betrayed his trust. It wasn’t a great morning, especially in contrast to how great the night before had been. But she finally got to do some sewing, and had almost forgotten the dream by the time patrol started.

But then she saw him, and kind of wanted to kiss him the way she’d gotten in the habit of doing. Everything was cleaner separate, though. Still, she found herself looking forward to the next time he came to visit her as Marinette as much as she looked forward to patrolling with him. Okay, maybe more so. Saving the city was fulfilling and stuff, and she liked hanging out with him, but she also really liked his mouth on her.

When patrol was over, she stopped by the neighborhood pharmacy. It was open late, and she knew a couple of the clerks by sight. The people who sold you emergency tampons tended to stick in the memory. But she was a superhero, responsible for saving Paris with her brilliant plans and foresight, and she was using some of that foresight to actually prepare ahead. Tampons, pantyliners, chocolate, backup ibuprofen. Marinette paused near the sleep aids, then added a sleep mask to her basket, too.

She and Chat hadn’t made any plans for his next visit the last time he’d come, and it wasn’t like she could have checked in with him about it on patrol. But she didn’t expect him to stay away more than a few days. If she knew where to find him as herself, she wouldn’t wait too long.

Sure enough, Thursday night she heard a knock on the hatch to the roof. Marinette put away her diary and knelt up to let him in. He dropped down next to her. “Hi, Princess. Hope I’m not intruding.”

“Not at all,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.

When the kiss ended, his hands were resting on her waist and hers were clasped behind his neck. “Lay down with me?”

She kissed him again, quick and closed-mouthed. “Yes. Pants stay on today, though.”

Chat reared back and searched her face, concerned. “I’m sorry, did I push -”

Marinette laid a finger on his lips and smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring fashion. “No, you’re good. We’re good. I just have my period.”

He blinked. “Oh.” He didn’t seem to be able to think of anything else to say.

Marinette laughed at him and tugged him down so they could lie face-to-face on top of her comforter. “There’s absolutely no reason we can’t make out.”

“Okay,” he said, and slide his hand up her side so his thumb was resting just at the side of her breast.

She leaned in to kiss him, and it was still kind of awkward to try and fit their faces together at this angle. But it worked, and she could slide her lips over his, a slow teasing pressure until he returned it. She ran her hands up and down his chest and over his back, and he ran his over her, keeping it all above the waist. It was nice, being able to touch more of him. They kissed leisurely until Marinette could feel her lips getting puffy and sensitive from all the contact. She pulled back and pressed her lips together, and liked how the texture of her lips felt so different and oversensitive even just against each other.

“Hey,” he said quietly, still running his hand up and down her side. “Do you still like that guy you mentioned?”

His timing was terrible. She felt herself blush. “I mean, yes? He’s still - yeah. Why?”

His hand dipped to the small of her back, and he rubbed circles in her skin. “It doesn’t matter. Just wondering.”

She searched his face until he cut her off by kissing her again. She tangled a hand in his hair and held him to her. It was better if they just didn’t talk about feelings. If she thought about them too much she would probably end up unhappy with this, with their arrangement, and she didn’t want to be unhappy with it. Casually messing around with someone she could trust and she didn’t have to interact with during her normal life was pretty much a perfect arrangement since Adrien liked someone else and she’d probably never have gotten up the nerve to ask him out even if she didn’t know his affections were elsewhere engaged.

When he started to kiss her neck, she said, “Wait a sec.”

He immediately took his hands from her, and Marinette twisted so she could reach her nightstand and the sleep mask she’d left there. She held it up, and couldn’t quite meet Chat’s eyes, because this was a practical measure, but it felt kind of kinky.

“Princess?” he murmured.

“Um, I was thinking that if I had this on, you could detransform and I wouldn’t learn your identity?”

He shifted his head down so he was directly in her eyeline again. His voice had dropped an octave. “Yeah? What did you have in mind?”

She met his gaze and deliberately bit her lip. “I want to be able to touch your skin. I want to get my hands on you, on your dick, and make you come. And since the suit doesn’t come off -”

He kissed her hard enough to press their teeth together hard and rolled his hips against her, erection rubbing against her thigh. His mouth softened on hers and she licked into his mouth. Without breaking the kiss, he skimmed his hand up her arm to her hand and took the sleep mask from her. He kissed her cheek, then her eyelid. “That sounds amazing, Princess. Can I?”

Marinette kept her eyes closed and lifted her head from the pillow. The bed shifted under her as Chat moved around, and then he was very delicately lowering the sleep mask over her head, not even letting the elastic skim her hair. It settled on her face, feeling strange in its familiarity. She reached up to make sure it was secure as Chat hovered over her, radiating heat.

“Plagg, claws off.”

There was a subaudible pop, and then a high-pitched voice that had to belong to his kwami said, “Wow, no, I’m out of here. Let me know when you’re ready to leave.”

Chat was there as his civilian self. It would be so easy to find out who he was. Marinette pressed her fingers to the elastic holding the mask in place. “How do you want me?”

“Naked,” Marinette said promptly, and it was strange how his voice was just slightly different.

He groaned, and then there was a rustle of fabric. When he settled down to the bed again, she reached for him and found nothing but smooth warm skin. He sucked in a breath, and not being able to see meant she was paying closer attention to any noise he might make. She leaned in to kiss his neck and kiss down to his collarbone. He stroked his hand over her back under her shirt, and she could feel just the edge of his nails. She brought both of her hands down his chest, and his stomach flexed under her touch, bringing his hips forward.

She kissed him on the mouth again, and he shifted the arm he was lying on so he could wrap his hand around the base of her skull and kiss her more deeply. Fine tremors were running under his skin, and she hadn’t even touched his dick yet. She stroked down his side, over his hip, then in and back up the front of his thigh. She slid her hand over, grazing wiry curls until she could wrap her hand around him. He groaned into her mouth. She liked feeling him come unraveled as she stroked up and down his shaft, but his dick itself felt - probably normal, for a dick? But dicks were weird. Why had no one ever said dicks were weird? The skin was soft and hot and a little loose over the firmness underneath.

He curled into her, and apparently gave up kissing in favor of just breathing into the hot close space between their mouths. She ran her hand down to the base of his dick and cupped his balls, weighing them carefully in her hand. She knew balls were supposed to be really sensitive, and didn’t want to hurt him at all. He whined, high in his throat, and she took that as encouragement. Marinette brought down her other hand to fondle the tip, and it was damp and slick. It made her hand slide more easily over his skin. She tried moving both her hands at once, stroking up and down while she rolled his balls in her palm.

“Oh, God, Marinette,” he said, and his hand left her back to grope behind her. His hips started moving, just incremental helpless jerks. It was hard to keep her hands moving steadily, but it didn’t seem to matter. “Fuck,” he said, and then he was shuddering, pushing her hand out of the way, and the air smelled thick and salt-bitter. When he’d stilled, he said, “Mar - Princess, that was amazing.”

He kissed her, mouth clumsy, and it was strange how adrift she felt now that her hands were no longer on him. She was used to being able to see, even in the semi-darkness they usually met in. She put a hand on his chest, and could feel his heartbeat, still fast. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, and she felt featherlight pressure along the edge of her sleep mask. “This was a brilliant idea.”

She licked her lips, and wished she could see his face. “I was thinking maybe it could come back at some point?”

He kissed her neck, her cheek, her mouth again. “I would love that, Princess.”


	9. Isn't Irritable

She woke up late and got to school just late enough that Mme. Bustier sighed at her but didn’t give her a tardy slip. Adrien wasn’t there, was scheduled for a photo shoot. There was a pop quiz, and Marinette was absolutely certain she’d done horribly on it. The photos from the Halloween costume contest were posted on the school website, and Marinette was nowhere in them because, despite all the effort she’d put in, there had been an akuma attack across town that she’d had to book it to, missing the entire contest. She got back a paper she’d gotten a C on. Alya had to babysit and had no time after school.

Nothing was terrible, but it all grated on her nerves, leaving her flayed open and irritable. She tried to work on some of her designs, but none of it was coming out right, so she stopped before she could ruin anything and went to play Mecha Strike III. She ate dinner with her parents, did her homework, and played Mecha Strike III again. Tikki got to join her, this time, as her parents went to bed early.

“I spent time with Plagg,” Tikki said abruptly, continuing a conversation they’d never started.

Marinette had thought that Tikki’s silence had meant nothing but her continued disapproval of Marinette not telling Chat who she was. She paused the game. “Will he have told Chat?”

Tikki sighed heavily, a sound that shouldn’t be able to come from a body that small. “No. We let you make your own mistakes.”

“It’s not a mistake,” Marinette said firmly, and all the peace she’d found fell away. Parts of her kept trying to get confused over what was going on, over what she was feeling and for who and how the whole truth would play into all of it. But she was silencing those parts. Things were good. So much had changed in the last year, all wildly out of her control, but what she had with Chat was safety and trust and something they both had control over. “I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, and got up to make two mugs of herbal tea.

She took them up to the roof, and Tikki gave her space. Marinette set one mug on the wall, letting the steam billow up in to the air, and hoped that Chat would be out and swing by close enough to see it.

He didn’t disappoint: a few minutes later he landed on her roof. “Hey, Princess.”

She managed a half-hearted smile and nodded towards the tea. “Hey, Chat.”

He picked up the mug and sipped it. “Thanks. So, what’s got you up here on a cold November evening?”

“Hoping to see you, actually.”

He smiled slowly and sat down on the lower part of the chaise, side brushing up against her raised shins. “Yeah?”

She folded her knees down out of the way and leaned forward to kiss him. It put her in a precarious position, but he steadied her elbow and kissed her back. Their mouths slid together, a point of heat in the nighttime chill, and gradually Marinette felt something ease in her. When she drew back, she smiled at him easily. “Yeah. Want to come inside?”

“Always, Princess,” he said, taking her hand. He kissed the back of it, and didn’t relinquish it even when Marinette had to fumble left-handed with the hatch. She found she didn’t mind - it was nice to be connected to him.

They descended into her room, and she pulled him down to lie with her on top of the covers. It put their hands at awkward angles to each other, so Marinette shifted her hand to lace their fingers together. “Kiss me?”

He slid up her body, sinuous in his catsuit. He brushed his mouth against hers, so light as to be teasing. She raised her head slightly to deepen it, but he retreated, brushing cloud-soft kisses against her lips. He kept retreating as she advanced until Marinette realized her head was crooked up at a terribly awkward angle. She giggled, and fell back to the pillow. Chat grinned at her, teeth flashing in the near-darkness, and sank down to kiss her properly.

On a happy sigh, she opened her mouth under his. She ran her free hand over his shoulder and down his arm to take his other hand. Tugging it up so both their joined hands were next to her head meant he couldn’t support himself on his arms for a moment, and the fully weight of his body settled on her. Marinette felt like maybe it should make her feel like she couldn’t breathe, but he wasn’t all that heavy, and the weight was comforting besides. She liked feeling connected to him.

They made out like that for a while, until Marinette started feeling slow nudging against her inner thigh. Marinette pressed her head back into her pillow and raised an eyebrow at him. Chat shrugged, more pragmatically than she’d expected of him. “It happens. Doesn’t mean we have to do anything else, if this is what you’re in the mood for.”

She rolled her hips experimentally and enjoyed the way his eyes went unfocused. She stilled, though, and considered. “I really liked touching you, but being blindfolded was . . . intense.”

He ran his nose up her cheek. “Bad?”

Marinette shook her head. “I just - today was a lot. I don’t think I could handle it.”

“Yeah,” Chat said. “I get it. Do you think you’ll ever want to?”

“Yes,” she said, putting all the emphasis she could into the word. “So much. I want to feel your skin on mine again, and I want to feel you in me.”

Chat groaned softly, and his dick pulsed to further hardness against her thigh. He extracted his right hand from hers and stuck the tip of one finger of his glove in his mouth, tugging it off with his teeth. He dropped the glove next to her pillow and took her hand again. “No blindfold doesn’t have to mean no skin on skin at all.”

Instead of lacing their fingers together and holding fast, he interwove their fingertips and then drew his hand down, the thin callous on the pads of his fingers drawing along the sensitive skin of the sides of her fingers. He slid his hand around, cupping her palm, and drew his thumb slowly over her heart line, then her life line. She watched his face, and he was wholly absorbed. There was something intense about the way he was focused just on her hand, on making the scant skin they both had exposed such a concentrated point of sensuality. He brushed over the inside of her wrist, then ran all of his fingers over it and up the inside of her arm towards her elbow. His touch was paralyzing, but once he’d moved to the inside of her bicep, she twisted her forearm up to grab his hair and direct him into a kiss.

His hand stilled when she thrust her tongue into his mouth, and that was basically the opposite of what she wanted. “Touch me,” she demanded.

He smiled, lips red and a devilish gleam in his eyes. “I thought I was, Princess.” He started moving his hand again, tracing up over her shoulder and along to her neck, then down to her collarbone and back out.

Marinette let out a frustrated groan. His smile morphed into a very self-satisfied smirk. He pressed a quick kiss to her other exposed collarbone. It was tricky, to shift his weight to his left elbow and his legs in order to raise his torso without letting go of or crushing her other hand, but Marinette refused to relinquish it, so he managed. Shifting around meant he had access, now, to her chest, but he still teased, running his fingers along the neckline of her tank top. “Tease,” she accused.

“Absolutely, Princess,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. He took his hand from her completely, then slid it up her shirt, skimming lightly up her ribs until he was holding her breast. His thumb ran over his nipple, and her mouth fell open.

He kissed her, and she tightened her fingers in his hair as he slid his tongue against hers. His hand never stilled on her breast. After a few moments, though, he tilted his head back and away from her and yawned massively.

He made a defeated noise and dropped his head to the pillow next to her, his hand sliding off her chest.

Stung, she asked pointedly, “Bored, Chat?”

He reared up, blinking at her in shock. “Never, Marinette! I just had to be up at four this morning for - stuff, and it was a really long day. I’m sorry.”

Marinette smoothed her hand over his back, feeling better. “Okay. I’m sorry.” She smiled wryly at him. “I guess today’s just not a good day. You should get some sleep.”

He twisted his face in disgruntlement.

She kissed the tip of his nose. “If you do, we might both have a better time tomorrow night, okay?”

“Okay.”


	10. Doesn't keep a record of complaints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The search term ‘french slang for vagina’ is now in my history. Also, the joke still works in French. Someone please kill me.

On a whim the next night, Marinette also grabbed snacks to take to the roof. It wasn’t like their hookups were anything like dates, but she lived above a bakery and had never fed him a thing. It was just weird.

Her intention to wait for him on the roof was thwarted by the weather - the clear skies from earlier in the day had gathered clouds with darkness and were threatening imminent downpour. She packed the snacks and her sketchpad back inside and closed the hatch just ahead of the first fat drops of rain. Setting up again on her chaise, Marinette glanced out the window, now almost completely obscured by the rain. “Do you think he’ll come, Tikki?”

Tikki sighed. “I don’t think he could stay away.”

Marinette frowned at her. What was that supposed to mean? Before she could ask, though, there was a knock on the hatch. Marinette waved at Tikki to hide and shouted, “Come in!”

Tikki phased through the floor while Chat dropped through the ceiling. “Hey, Princess,” he said. He peeked over the edge of the loft, then flipped down. Marinette sucked in a breath, anticipating a thump that her parents might hear even two floors down, but he landed cat-soft.

She let her bated breath out. “Hi, Chat. Cupcake?”

He folded himself up and sat on the floor at her feet, then took the plate from her. “Thank you!” He stared at the cupcake like he never got to eat sweets, and it felt awkward to watch him.

Marinette looked down at her sketchbook, deepened the shading on a fold of cloth. It was surprisingly easy to ignore him, adding more dimensionality to the design. She didn’t even notice him moving around until his breath hit the back of her neck. “That’s really good.”

Marinette jumped, then looked up at him, craning her neck. He dropped a kiss on her lips. “As was the cupcake.”

Marinette smiled at him, and was reminded why he was there in the first place. “Bed?”

“Can I carry you?”

She knew he could carry her - he’d done it before. It was just such a thoroughly different context. “Yeah, okay.”

He bent over the back of the chaise and scooped her up bridal style. Marinette squeaked and dropped her sketchbook. It bounced to the floor as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She realized belatedly that she was still holding her pencil and dropped it behind his shoulder. He hoisted her higher and swung towards the stairs - smacking her head into the wall.

“Ow!”

He nearly dropped her. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

She rubbed the back of her head. “Maybe I should do the stairs on my own?”

Chat set her down like she was made of glass. “I’m so sorry.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Accidents happen.”

He hovered behind her as he followed her up the stairs. When Marinette lay down on the bed, he just kind of hovered on the top step. Marinette held out a hand to him, and he took it and joined her. “I’m sorry.”

“No lasting damage, Kitty,” she said, starting to get impatient. “You can stop apologizing.”

He searched her face, then leaned in slowly to kiss her. He kept it so light and sweet and gentle that she had to bite him for it. They made out, and gradually he got less stiff, less tentative. The dull sting in Marinette’s head faded completely, and she wanted more. She drew back from him, hand on his chest. “Chat? You wanna do more?”

He pulled her closer. “Yeah. What do you want?”

She pressed her face to his shoulder because she knew a blush was rising and she didn’t want to see his face if he wasn’t into it. “I don’t have condoms, so, I mean - but if you wanted to grab the sleep mask on the nightstand, we could both be naked and touch each other?”

Groaning, he reached up and over her to the nightstand. “You’re going to kill me, Princess.”

When he drew back, she grinned up at him. “You like it.”

He kissed her. “Definitely.”

He dangled the sleep mask above her, and Marinette took it and put it on, settling it firmly over her eyes.

“Plagg, claws off,” he said, voice a little rough. Then he was putting his bare hands on her waist and drawing her shirt up and off.

She pushed off her own pants as she heard him moving around, ditching his own clothing. When she was naked, he grabbed her by the hips to orient her and then pressed her to the bed with a kiss.

Twining her arms around his back, she kissed him back, and luxuriated in the warm smooth press of skin on skin. She curled her legs around his, too, bringing more of them into contact with each other. His dick slid along the cut of her hip, strange and intimate.

His hands slid up from her hips, slid everywhere they could reach now that his hands were safe and her skin was bare. She touched everywhere she could, too, and they were an undifferentiated ball of moving hands and sensation. His hips flexed against her, making his dick drag against her skin. She stuck her hand between them to stroke him. He thrust into the close hot space between her hand and her stomach.

He kept thrusting, making his whole body slide against hers. She kind of wished she could see, could watch the low light play over the muscles she could feel, but that wasn’t a good idea. “Can I come on you, Princess?”

Being able to feel him against her whole body as he came undone sounded amazing. “Yeah.”

Chat’s thrusts developed purpose, and then he was leaving damp spots on her skin, and then he lost his purpose. He gasped in her ear and bit down on her neck and there was a wet rush between them. It was skin-warm, and felt weird between Marinette’s fingers. Chat shuddered above her. “God, Marinette,” he said, like it was a whole statement unto itself. He breathed hard into her ear for a moment, then pulled back. “Let me clean you up,” he murmured.

He lifted her sticky fingers to his mouth and sucked them in, tongue running up them. He froze, then fumbled beside her. Soft woven cotton touched her hand next, and it had to be his shirt he was wiping her hand the rest of the way clean with. He ran it over her stomach next, and it tickled. She tensed her stomach, trying not to collapse into giggles. “Didn’t like the taste, Chat?”

“I have found,” he said with an overly deliberate cadence, “that I have much more of an affinity for pussy.”

Marinette giggled helplessly, and grabbed the pillow she was lying on to lob it in his general direction. “That was terrible!”

“Maybe,” he said, and leaned down to press a kiss to her belly button. “But can I?”

“Yeah,” Marinette breathed.

He slid his hands down to the backs of her knees and guided them apart so he could settle between them. He skimmed his lips up the inside of her thigh until he was right where she wanted him, tongue circling her clit. He kept his hands moving until he was cupping her ass. It was the first time he’d touched her there, and he used his grip to tilt her hips to get a better angle to go down on her. She threaded her fingers through his hair. It felt like it had more product in it with him untransformed.

She arched her hips helplessly, and he made a low noise that vibrated through her, stretching her taut as corset-strings. He slid a finger into her, then a second when he felt how wet she was. Crooking them upwards, he managed to hit just the right spot, and all the tension in her broke in one long wave of pleasure. She moaned, definitely way louder than she should be.

He took his hand from her, leaving her feeling achingly empty, and he shifted to lay with his head on her stomach. There was another crumpling of cloth, and then he made a contented noise against her skin. “I could stay just like this forever.”

Marinette carded her fingers through her hair and made a noncommittal noise. She liked the intimacy of this, loved being able to touch him, but without a purpose to their nakedness, not being able to see started to itch. It would be so much easier if she trusted herself enough to see him, to get rid of all the secrets between them still. But she wasn’t ready. And besides - it was just hooking up. There was no reason that they needed to be able to just lie around together.

No reason at all.


	11. Isn’t happy with injustice

Marinette didn’t like having any kind of complicated feelings about hooking up with Chat, not even ones about the cost versus benefit of wearing a blindfold, and especially not when they lead to thoughts about revealing her identity. She didn’t want to tell him she was Ladybug! That would bring feelings into it, and this wasn’t supposed to be about feelings.

She got to take out her confusion and frustration on an akuma, thankfully, and maybe - okay, probably - did so with excessive violence and too little communication with Chat. He seemed preoccupied too, though.

Identity nonsense was terrible.

Marinette smashed the akumatized object, shattering it into tiny pieces. The butterfly flew up, and she cleansed it. She and Chat fistbumped, and Marinette swung away before her transformation could wear off.

When she was home, she dropped onto the bed and groaned. “Tikki, I think I like Chat.”

“I would hope so, considering everything you’ve been doing together,” Tikki said in her high, sweet voice. The way she sounded naturally made it hard for her to sound acerbic, but she managed to slide hints in around the edges.

Marinette pressed a pillow over her face. “It was supposed to be friendly!”

\--

When Chat showed up, it was amidst a dull cold drizzle. He kissed her in lieu of greeting, drawing her in against him. She melted against him, not minding that he was cold, and skimmed her hands down his back to grab his leather-clad ass.

He sank back against the wall, then hitched her up against him so she was sitting in his lap. They ended up pressed together from hip to shoulder, Marinette’s arms around his neck and his around her back. He drifted from her mouth over to her neck, and she sighed and let her head fall back. He brought his teeth to bear on her neck, just lightly. He ran his tongue over her suprasternal notch and started up the other side of neck.

“I care about you a lot,” he said into the soft skin behind her ear.

Marinette stiffened. “You weren’t supposed to!”

He shrunk away from her, and she sat back so she wasn’t hovering directly over his erection while she freaked out about his having feelings. “I - sorry? It seemed better to say than to keep it a secret,” he said miserably. “More fair.”

Marinette felt her hand rise involuntarily towards her earring, and folded them together in her lap. “I guess. Thank you for telling me.”

They sat in silence that was deeply uncomfortable. Chat reached abortively for her, but just clutched his thighs.”Do - do you want me to go?”

Marinette had no idea. Continuing when he had feelings would probably hurt him, but if they could still be honest, that was fine, right? If they were communicating, things were under control. The idea of sending him away sent a panicky zing up her spine. It might be selfish, but she didn’t want him to leave. She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them, then shook her head.

“Okay,” Chat said, and some of the tension went out of him.

They sat there in frozen silence. Marinette swallowed. “What do we do now?”

Chat shrugged. “I mean, we’re still making this up as we go along. Want to make out?”

Marinette hesitated, then got up on her knees to go back to him. “Yeah, okay.”

He let out a relieved sigh and met her halfway, kissing her softly. This - this was better than dealing with feelings. She didn’t want this softness, though, this display of yawning vulnerability over the places she could hurt him. She nipped at his lip, then licked into his mouth when he opened for her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she fell sideways, drawing him down to lie with her on the bed.

His hand slipped beneath her shirt like it belonged there, and he drew his gloved fingers up her spine. She arched into him, rubbing her breasts against the planes of his chest. The very tip of his claws grazed the skin of her lower back as he pulled her closer, kissed her deeper. They sank into the familiarity of traded kisses and hitched breaths, though they both kept their hands above the waist.

It got late enough that the lights of the businesses around the city started to blink out, and he rested his forehead on hers, breathing not quite steady. “I should go. We both need sleep. Do - when do you want me to come back?”

The correction he’d made to the question didn’t escape her. She kissed him quickly. “Come tomorrow?”

He kissed her fervently. “Tomorrow, then, Princess.”


	12. Happy with the truth

Chat came back the next night and said nothing about feelings. Marinette remembered herself and didn’t offer him tea or snacks or anything that would take them out of bed. It was sort of awkward, saying hi to each other, but Marinette - she didn’t want the awkwardness. When she pulled back from first kissing him, she asked, “Are we good?”

He ran a thumb over her cheekbone and smiled wryly. “How could we be anything else?”

She felt a knot of tension she’d been studiously ignoring dissolve. She tugged him down to lie next to her. “Touch me?”

He pulled off his glove and put his hand on her stomach under her shirt. “I never get tired of it.”

Chat nuzzled down her neck, his hand tracing achingly small circles that inched up her ribs. Marinette relaxed into his touch, stroking his back and arching into him. He kissed her collarbone and traced the neckline of her shirt with his mouth, his hand still creeping upwards glacier-slow. He was trailing his fingers in a slow arc just under her breast when she lost her patience.

Marinette rolled upright enough to strip off her shirt, threw it to the foot of the bed, and glared at Chat. He laughed and leaned up to kiss her. Drawing her down again, his hand roved unerringly to her breast, palming it. She let out a soft sigh and he chased it, tongue darting into her mouth.

They made out until Marinette was wet and aching, nipples feeling almost scalded from all of his attention. She tugged his hair and brought his head up so they were face to face. “I really, really want to come.”

He kissed her cheek. “Yeah? How?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but he tweaked her nipple, and all that came out was a strangled noise. She sucked in another breath. “I don’t care, just _now_.”

He sat up and away from her, and Marinette had only made half a noise of protest before his hands were tugging off her pants. The air of the room was chilly on her bare skin. He slid two fingers into her with no waiting, no preamble. They went in easily with as wet as she was, and she jerked against his hand. He put his mouth to the sensitive inner curve of her breast and bit, and then she was flying.

They’d done this enough that he recognized some of the signs of her body, and his fingers slowed. He stared down at where his fingers pumped lazily in her. “Do you think you could take another?”

Marinette shuddered. “I think I really want to try.”

His fingers were slim, but still thicker than hers. Introducing a third was a stretch, an overload of sensation. Marinette clutched the sheets and let her head fall back. He moved slowly, but it was still like every thrust of his fingers lit up every nerve ending that could be conscripted to the task. She came again, then stilled his hand with hers, breathing hard. “Can you get condoms?”

“Right now?”

She shook her head. “Next time. Next time you should really bring condoms.”

He kissed her, and his erection pressed into her thigh. “As you wish, Princess.”


	13. Puts up with all things

It was hard to pay attention in school the next day. She found herself sketching designs for lingerie, of all things, stuff she’d never have the guts to wear even if she made it. It wasn’t better when she got home: she couldn’t sit still, not for homework or sewing or anything. “Tikki, do you want to go on patrol?”

“Sure, Marinette!”

Racing over the rooftops helped Marinette settle in her skin, which was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to get so worked up over Chat, and she wasn’t supposed to feel more herself as Ladybug. But she was able to deter a mugging just by standing there, so that was cool. The sun was going down, so she swung back home to help close the bakery and have dinner.

It was easier to be normal around her parents, but then afterwards, when her parents were winding down for bed, she took a very long and thorough shower. When she got upstairs, Chat was sitting cross-legged on her bed. She smiled slowly. “I didn’t expect that leaving my window unlocked would mean a stray would wander in.”

He scratched at the back of his head. “Was this okay?”

“Yeah, Chat,” she said, finger-combing her still-wet hair. She ascended the stairs, and leaned in to kiss him when their heads were level with each other. It felt very domestic. They weren’t domestic, though. They were friends scratching an itch and exploring. “Did you bring condoms?”

He nipped her lip. “Yes. You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. Are you?” She ran her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck, not touching him anywhere else.

“Absolutely,” he said, and pulled her forward into her own bed so that she landed on top of him.

Marinette giggled, then kissed him enthusiastically. Her damp hair fell around them in a curtain. He put his hands on her ass and pulled her up so she was straddling his hips. Her knees fell on either side of his legs, and she ground lightly against him. They kissed and kissed, neither of them in any rush. It was still early, and it was Friday night. His hands slid up her hips and came to rest on her waist, under her shirt.

They kissed until both their lips were red, until Marinette wanted more than his lips, wanted his hands on her. She arched up and away from him and reached for the sleep mask where she’d stashed it on the shelf at the head of her bed. He nuzzled her neck as it went past, and her chest. She stopped, mask dangling from her fingertips, happy to be exactly where she was.

Chat stroked up her ribs, drawing her shirt with him. He lifted his hands away from her skin, up enough to suggest his further intention. He murmured into her skin, “Princess?”

“Yes,” she said, and helped him take her shirt off. He nuzzled against her bare skin, then flipped them so he was lying on top of her, nestled between her thighs.

He kissed up from her breasts. “I really, really want you. I don’t think I’ll last, though, so can I get you off first?”

Her hand relaxed on the blindfold, and it dropped to the bed. “Yeah,” she breathed. “I’d like that. And I - it doesn’t matter how long. I just want to try. I want to feel you.”

He rested his head on her collarbone. “God, Princess.” He reached above her for the blindfold, and she couldn’t help but make a slight moue of distaste. He paused, studying her face. “You hate being blindfolded, don’t you?” He pressed a kiss to the corner of her eye, and her eyelashes fluttered strangely against his lips.

Marinette wrinkled her nose. “Maybe a little bit? I mean, it’s worth it, but yeah. I like being able to read you.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Okay. Well, I don’t need to detransform to go down on you. And then what if I tell you what I’m doing?”

She laced her fingers in his hair again and drew him down so she could kiss him, lick into his mouth. “You have the best ideas.”

She shucked her pants, and he ran his gloved hands down her body with a kind of easy familiarity that was as arousing as the touch itself. His shoulders nudged her legs farther apart, making a space for him to settle there. He kept his hands on her hips as he leaned forward to put his mouth on her. He fucked into her with his tongue, then dragged it up to circle her clit. He licked and sucked until she was gasping with it, hands still on her hips and thumbs running up and down her hipbones. The danger of claws was real, but the stillness of his hands, the way they kept her hips in place, was still a maddening counterpoint to the activity of his mouth Eventually she came against his mouth, then shuddered in the aftershocks.

Marinette groped for the box she’d seen earlier, the one that had fallen in the crack between her bed and the wall. “Chat.” He nipped at her bellybutton, and Marinette convulsed in laughter, kneeing him in the ribs. “That tickles!”

He pressed a kiss to her sternum, right over her heart. “I love every one one of your reactions, Princess, even when they mean you try to injure me.”

Marinette rolled her eyes. He smirked, but there was something hot and sincere lurking in his gaze. She handed him the box of condoms. “I’m going to put on the blindfold now.”

She barely had it in place before he was detransforming - still caught a sliver of green light as it flashed. She reached for him, pulling off his shirt, but then he moved out of reach of her hands. “I’m taking off my pants now. I’m getting out a condom. I’m putting it on.”

He put his hands on her inner thighs and ran them slowly upwards. “I’m not sure how to make the practical bits sound sexy. I just look at you, splayed out and flushed and wet, and I can’t think of any pretty words. All I can think of is how much I want you.”

Marinette put her hands on his forearms, glad to know where to aim to touch him. She rolled her hips up towards him, suggestive and wanting.

He groaned. Pulling her hands up to his mouth, he kissed the backs of her knuckles. It was so much like how he treated her as Ladybug, when she was strong and fearless and he was flamboyantly, over the top in love with her. Her breath caught. He passed one of her hands over so she was holding both of hers in one of his. “I’m going to - Marinette.”

“Yes,” she said, and gripped his hand tight and spread her thighs fractionally wider. The blunt head of his dick pressed against her, and he slid in one slow purposeful millimeter at a time. Then he slid in the rest of the way all at once, and she gasped, eyelashes fluttering against the inside of the sleep mask.

He let go of her hands, put one hand on her thigh and the other on the side of her face, thumb tracing over cheekbone. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head, then took his hand and held it in place so she could turn her face to kiss his palm. “It’s just - new. Different?”

He leaned down to kiss her, and it changed the angle of him inside her. Her breath caught, and she grabbed his shoulders just to have something to hold on to. She could feel the shift of muscle under warm skin as he kissed her. Tilting her hips slightly made his lips go briefly slack on hers before he thrust his tongue in her mouth.  He slid out of her infinitesimally, then thrust back in, moving his tongue in tandem. Sliding out farther generated more friction when he thrust back in, and Marinette tried to move her hips in counterpoint. The way they were coming together, the strange intimate grind of it, made it hard to focus on kissing. They ended up just breathing each other’s air, lips a hairsbreadth apart and brushing together only as a side effect of the movement of their bodies.

They found a rhythm that worked, that had both of them coming together at an angle and pace that was slowly driving Marinette mindless with pleasure. Then Chat started losing that deliberate rhythm, hips driving into her jerkily. His head fell to her shoulder, his whole body arching over her in a way that felt as protective as it was inevitable. “Marinette,” he murmured into her collarbone, his hands on her thighs encouraging her to wrap her legs around his waist.

She did, and he thrust again just a couple more times before his hips stilled and he shuddered against her. He stayed there a moment, pressed against her, breathing hard into her neck. He kissed the side of it. “I’m going to pull out now.” He did, and it was strange to be empty and not connected to him anymore. Stranger still that her baseline expectations were so thoroughly off-kilter. “I’m gonna go, uh, throw this out,” he said, and Marinette could hear clumsy footsteps on the stairs. He came back, touched her ankle before he slid up to lie beside her. Nuzzling her shoulder, he said, “You’re so lovely, Princess.”

She smiled and found his head by touch, then carded her fingers through his hair. “Do you think you could change back to cuddle? I want to be able to see you.”

He pressed his face momentarily harder into her shoulder, like he wanted to burrow into her. “I think if I stay too long I’ll fall asleep,” he said reluctantly.

“Oh,” Marinette said, and the disappointment in her voice was even thicker than she’d expected. “Okay. Will you come back tomorrow?”

“Of course, if you’ll have me.” He rolled away from her, towards the edge of the loft. “Plagg,” he hissed, volume at that awkward in-between that happened when one only wanted some people to hear.

When he touched her face again, it was with gloved hands, and he was prying off the sleep mask. Marinette closed her eyes and drew him down to kiss him again. “Good night, Chat.”

“Good night, Marinette.”


	14. Trusts in all things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So! There's now a [remix challenge](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/ml_remix_2016/profile) going on and you should go do it.

Chat came back Saturday night despite the icy rain pouring down outside. Marinette ushered him quickly inside, for which she was rewarded by him dripping on her when he leaned in to kiss her. She pushed him away, giggling. “You’re freezing.”

He dodged her arm, diving in to shove his wet head into her neck. Marinette shrieked out a laugh and batted at him. “You’re the worst.”

“Mm, maybe,” he said, and kissed the side of her neck. He wasn’t quite so cold, and she was already damp, so she tilted her head away to bare more of her neck to him. He licked and kissed the length of it, then took her earlobe in his mouth. His teeth closed carefully just under her earring, sending a jolt through her not just from the sensation but from how close he was to the literal manifestation of her other identity. The earrings were dark when she wasn’t Ladybug, but it felt - not dangerous, but on the edge of something. She didn’t want to think about how telling him didn’t feel dangerous anymore, how keeping the secret just made her feel kind of guilty. She wanted to open up to him and let him in. He sucked on her earlobe.

She sighed happily, letting her head fall back. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close against him where they knelt face to face on the bed. Hugging him in return, she ran her hands over his back. She slid a hand into his damp, rain-flattened hair and tilted his head to kiss him. Running her nose alongside his, she murmured, “Lie down with me.”

“One sec,” he said. “Plagg, claws in.”

Marinette stiffened and slammed her eyes closed as green light rose around him. “What -” she choked out around her rage and fear that he would do this, do this like this, here, with her, without even talking about it with either side of her.

He put a bare hand on her jaw, drawing her face towards him. “Hey, it’s okay, you can open your eyes.”

She opened her eyes slowly, then all at once. “Oh,” she said wonderingly, reaching up to touch his face. “You got a mask.”

“It’s just they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future,” he said, a lopsided smile on his face. A black domino that looked a lot like his mask as Chat was tied onto his head, an elastic stretching into his hair standing out as the major difference from his mask when transformed. His eyes were just as green like this, but with white sclera and round pupils. She traced his brow bone with her fingertips.

“Perfect,” she said, and leaned up to kiss him. It was strange to run her hands over him and feel cotton instead of leather or skin, but it was nice, too. Soft. Dry, at least, unlike his suit had been. She felt kind of bad for not trusting him, but also effervescently happy that they could be face to face like this.

He slid his hands under her shirt, and it was just so nice to have skin on skin and not worry about claws. They undressed each other slowly in the half light, and his button-down meant that neither of them had to worry about dislodging the mask. His skin was pale and smooth and unscarred in a way that was surreal given how many hits she’d watched him take for her. Miraculous healing erased every sign of sacrifice. She kissed his shoulder, rolled him over so she could kiss down his chest. Every time she looked up at him she got to meet his gaze, wildly and utterly intent on her. She just had to kiss him again, trying to keep every inch of their skin in contact. He gripped her waist, holding her still for a moment as he ground up against her.

She shivered. He let go and ran his hands over her, cupping her breasts. She touched his bare skin in return, watching all of his reactions. She got to watch his mouth go slack when she tweaked his nipple. It was just so thoughtful of him to try to work out details that would make her happier while still protecting himself. Suddenly she was desperate for him. “Condom,” she said, leaning away from him to grope for the box she’d stashed between her bed and the wall. “That is, if you want?”

“Yes,” he said, his hands on her ass.

She pulled out a condom and ripped open the foil. Scooting down the bed so she could see what she was doing, she pinched the tip of the condom and set it on his dick. He twitched under her hand, and she frowned, looking up at his face. Chat looked lost. His hands were bunched in the sheets. Marinette carefully rolled the condom down, then ran her hand up over his covered dick.

Chat interrupted her exploration by reaching for her, his hands a plea to come and kiss him. Marinette obliged, then murmured in his ear, “I kind of want to ride you.”

“Anything,” he gasped out.

She put her knees on either side of his hips and reached down to hold his dick steady as she slid onto it. Staring into his eyes, she inched onto him. The angle didn’t quite work, though. She tried again, but nope. Marinette huffed out a breath to get her bangs out of her eyes and sat up. That made it easier - she slid down onto him easy as breathing. The sensation arrowed through her, and she stilled on him.

Beneath her, Chat was still but for his breathing, hands still on her thighs. His fingertips were digging into her flesh like he needed an anchor. She rose up slowly and sank back down, and both of them trembled with it. She rode him slowly, hands on his chest. It put tension in her thighs that she wasn’t used to, and it was hard to concentrate with all the raw sensation going on.

Chat curled up towards her, put his hands on her back. He drew her down for a kiss, and it changed the angle of him inside her. She couldn’t really move up and down and kiss him at the same time, but she could put her hands on his jaw and roll her hips. He couldn’t stay curled up like that forever, though. He put his hands on her breasts as he broke the kiss. Shoulders back on the bed, he used the extra leverage to thrust up into her. It threw her just slightly off-balance, enough that his hands nearly left her. She clutched his hands to her chest, keeping them exactly where she wanted them. Her head fell back, loose hair tickling her spine.

“Mari,” he said desperately, “Mari, I need you to come.”

She tilted her head forward to look at him, neck feeling loose and irrelevant. The whites of his eyes were visible all the way around, and his gaze skittered over her, unable to settle. God, she loved seeing him like this. She reached down to touch her clit, touching it just the way she liked. It barely took anything at all before she was flying, clamping down around him as she came.

He bucked unsteadily beneath her, eyes gone blind, then went still.

They both stayed that way as he slowly softened inside her. Chat reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind Marinette’s ear. “I should go throw out the condom.”

“Yeah, okay,” Marinette said, and rolled off him. She stared up at the hatch to the roof as he staggered down the steps. Even with the heavy rain, the night was never completely dark in the City of Lights.

Chat turned off the desk lamp she’d left on and came back up to the bed. He grabbed her hand and raised it to his mouth to kiss her palm. Her heart gave up right there and rolled over. It didn’t feel like a new thing, either: it felt like some practiced somersault of emotion. When had she fallen in love with Chat Noir?


	15. Hopes for all things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Delay for this one was longer than usual because of crazy work stuff. Still not totally resolved, so who knows when anything is happening or what state I'll be in this time next week!!!!!
> 
> Anyway, I listened to Sweet Nothing by Florence Welch and Calvin Harris on repeat a lot while writing it. You might enjoy listening while reading it?

The whole feelings thing was a problem. As Ladybug, her eyes kept catching on him. At least it was just patrol, not an attack. Still, she nearly fumbled a swing because she couldn’t stop watching. He wasn’t even flirting that much, which was a kind of mercy, because she wouldn’t have been able to deal with it.

When she got home, she buried her face in her pillow and screamed. “I need to tell him, Tikki.”

Tikki said nothing. When Marinette looked over, Tikki was just watching her, exasperation all over her face. Okay, so Tikki had said to come clean earlier. Weeks ago, in fact. It had seemed like it would complicate things, and so Marinette had avoided it, but her own heart had done all the complicating necessary to make everything a mess. And now she had until the weekend again to stew in her own feelings, because they both had stuff to do during the week. Like more patrol.

It was tempting to cut it short, just so that she wouldn’t be awkward, but that would mean giving up time with him, and she didn’t think she was quite capable of that. She landed next to him on a rooftop, and that was - where she wanted to spend most of her time. Being next to him felt right, even if she felt vaguely dissociated because she was caught in a loop considering the convergence of both of her relationships with him.

He smiled at her, a little smaller than usual. It made her heart trip, even though an obvious sign of waning interest shouldn’t, because less enthusiasm for flirting with Ladybug emphasized how he cared for her as Marinette. Probably? He wasn’t fickle, he had to still care. God. She really had to talk to him about feelings as Marinette before she could even consider telling him who she was.

She bumped against his shoulder with her own.

“Quiet night,” he said. They were most of the way through their usual circuit, and hadn’t seen so much as a mugging.

“Probably a good thing,” she replied. Just the two of them showing up, with their Miraculous and recognizable outfits, was enough to deter most things. It was better when they didn’t have to, though, when it was just the two of them on a run most people couldn’t even dream of.

He nodded, and they took off again. There was peace in this, and Marinette tried to sink into it and forget the way she’d be changing things.

-

When he came to her bedroom, she didn’t even let him get a word out, just pulled him in for a fevered kiss. He was ardent in return, and his hand fisted in her hair to hold her close. It would be so nice just to stay like this forever, making out and perfectly in synch and not having to talk about things.

Chat drew the rest of his body in closer to her, and she pressed herself against his chest. He was still cool to the touch from being out in the November night, but it wasn’t really a deterrent. The heat built between them fast enough that she didn’t have time to get cold. He slid one gloved hand under her pyjama top, though, and wow, okay, so maybe things didn’t heat up quite fast enough. Marinette yelped and slapped him in the shoulder, arching away.

Chat looked stricken for a moment, then his icy damned fingers flexed against her back and he seemed to realize why she was writhing away from him. He immediately moved his hand down to her hip, covered in fuzzy sleep pants. “Oops?”

She buried her face in the crook of his neck. “You’ll warm up faster under the blankets.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed the side of his face over hers, then reluctantly let go of her. They arranged themselves on the bed, and Marinette pulled the sheet and comforter up to cover them both.

Marinette stared at his bell. She couldn’t quite bring herself to meet his eyes, not with heat already creeping up her cheeks. He was a lot braver than her in this, in being vulnerable to other people. Marinette had no trouble being brave when it was something she needed to do, but exposing her soft places deliberately and on purpose wasn’t something she technically needed to do, and it was scary. But Chat would never hurt her, not on purpose. She knew that all the way to her core: even if he didn’t feel the same, he would try not to hurt her. “Um, so, you know a while ago, how you said you, uh, might have feelings? That you care about me?”

His hand twitched where it rested over her shirt on her ribs. “Yeah.”

“Do - do you still?” She managed to peek up at his face, and there was something that looked a little raw and exposed even under the mask.

Still, his voice was steady, even as his fingers flexed nervously against her. “Yeah.”

Marinette stared at the bell again, at her hand on his chest next to it and the contrast between her skin and the black leather. “Oh, good. Um, I might have started caring about you, too?”

“Princess,” he breathed. He took his hand from her side, and its absence made her feel achingly cold and abandoned until he cupped her jaw.

She managed to meet his eyes, and he was staring at her. It was hard to read a face mostly obscured by a mask, but she had experience with Chat in particular, and he was looking at her like he looked at Ladybug. He was looking at her like she was made of miracles and starstuff. He slid his hand up her jaw, tangling his fingers in her hair, and kissed her sweetly. The nervousness that had strung tight across her shoulders fell away, and she melted into him. The kiss stayed soft and achingly sweet.

“Claws in,” he murmured against her mouth, and they were both enveloped in green light.

“Right,” said a high-pitched voice. “I’m just gonna . . . go.”

“Mm,” Chat said.

Marinette kept her eyes closed as she pulled back from him. “Are you wearing your mask?”

He kissed her eyelids. “Yes.”

She opened her eyes, and his gaze was so gentle it hurt. “I really, really want you.”

“Me, too,” he said, and slid his bare hand - warm now - back under her shirt. “What do you want?”

She ran the tips of her fingers over the parts of his collarbone left exposed by his loose sweater. “Will you give me a hickey? Somewhere it won’t show. I want a reminder I can carry with me.”

He groaned softly and kissed her again. “Anything for you, Princess.”

She shimmied out of her shirt without sitting up. When her arms were up over her head he put his hands on hers, pressing them palms-together in suggestion. Marinette held them together, and he passed both of her hands to a loose grasp in one of his, still suggestion rather than any hint of force. His free hand he trailed lightly down her wrist, her inner arm, over her elbow and up the vulnerable curve of her inner bicep. The slowness of the caress was almost more titillating than the touch itself. Her breath hitched as he drew his hand forward down to the curve of her breast. His fingertips brushed her nipple, and her clothed hips jerked forward against his. Tracing over to the inner curve of her breast, he murmured, “Here?”

“Huh?” Marinette said, blinking. One corner of his mouth curled smugly. “Oh. Yes.”

Kissing her swiftly, he let go of her hands. He kissed her cheek, her jaw, the side of her neck, and then just opened his mouth and ran it down her chest. He closed his teeth on the inner curve of her breast and sucked. She gasped, arching against him. He worried the skin between his teeth, just lightly, and ran his tongue over it. She clutched his shoulders. Releasing the skin between his teeth, he just sucked, hard, then pulled back to look at his handiwork. He took the same patch of skin between his teeth again and bit down harder. It rode the edge between pleasure and pain, and when he took his mouth from her she just had to curl down and kiss him.

He wrapped both arms around her waist and held her to him, then slid one hand down to cup her ass. His fingers dipped between her thighs, maddeningly close to where she wanted them.

She sank her teeth into his lower lip, then said, “We should both be naked.”

“Absolutely,” he said, but made no move to let go of her.

When she started to pull up his sweater, he slid his hand under her pants instead of over them. His fingertips just brushed against her entrance, and he slid one finger just the tiniest bit into her. “That is extremely distracting,” she said.

“Mm,” he hummed. “It’s meant to be. I really want to make you come.”

“But - naked,” she managed, complete sentences moving beyond her as he slid a finger farther into her. 

“Yeah,” he said, kissing the upper curve of her breast. “Decided I don’t care yet. Wanna get you off. I love watching your face when you come, love the noises you make.”

She shivered and tangled her fingers deeper in his sweater. His words felt like a different declaration altogether. It was too much, though, to contemplate all at once, so she just said, “So make me come.”

He groaned, and she felt his hard-on against her thigh when he pressed against her. He put more space between them, giving himself room to slide his hand down the front of her pants. He slid his fingers along her slit, gathering wetness, then circled her clit. She shoved her hand down the back of his sweater, needing more skin on skin to anchor her. He kissed her breasts over and over as he worked her with his fingers until it all got to be too much, pleasure coiling her tighter and tighter until she came on a broken moan.

His fingers stilled, but didn’t leave her. “Do you want more?” Chat asked, mouth directly against her breast.

“I want you to fuck me,” she said, tone languid and dreamy.

He surged upright, pushing the blanket down to both their waists. He shucked his sweater and pants in rapid succession, and Marinette tackled her own pants as he went for the condoms. His cock stuck straight out from his body, the tip flushed a dark pink. He rolled on a condom, then asked, “On your back?”

Marinette scooted closer to the middle of the bed, then reached for him. He slid down into the blankets with her before he kissed her, and she twined her arms around his neck. Propped on one elbow, he reached between them with his other hand. He slid into her, and she sighed in contentment. He fucked into her steadily until he wasn’t steady anymore, until he gasped, “Marinette,” and stilled, shuddering.

She carded her fingers through his hair, sweaty and sticking up strangely around the ties for his mask. She kind of wanted to stay with him like this forever.

Inevitably, though, he had to get up and get rid of the condom, and then they had to find his pants in the tangle of blankets at the bottom of the bed.

“I wish I could stay, Princess,” he said, stealing one more kiss. “I’ll see you soon, though.”

“Soon,” Marinette echoed, and knew it would have to be.


	16. Endures all things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to the thing! I was in Las Vegas and walked like 30km inside the fucking convention hall. In 3 days. I hung out with one of the guys who invented mountain biking, was very salty at an industry coffee, and hatched 13 eggs in Pokemon Go. For this and other weird things that happen in my life, come talk to me at uswe.tumblr.com.
> 
> One to go!

The butterflies in Marinette’s stomach were worse than any akuma they’d ever defeated. Still, she would endure, and make it through, because without truth there was no way forward. She let out a slow, controlled breath that fogged in the night air and waited for Chat to show up on the roof.

When he landed on the roof behind her the noise was almost whisper-quiet, but she was used to listening for him. She turned to face him, trying to smile. Chances were really slim he would hate her. He wouldn’t hate her, right?

“Hey, LB,” he said, grinning until he caught sight of her face. His smile waned until it was a sad sliver of a thing. “What’s up?”

She bit her lip, then made herself stop: he’d seen her do that too much as Marinette, and he _reacted_  to it when she was Marinette. Having him make the connection would pre-empt everything she’d been working her way towards, would obviate all the trust she was trying to show him now. Him _reacting_  to it while she was Ladybug would just be - terrible. “I - um. I need to tell you something. But I don’t want you to hate me?”

He put his hand on her arm. “I would never hate you, my Lady.”

She twitched her arm back, and he let his hand fall, looking confused. She took a deep breath. “I just - I want you to know that I - I hadn’t wanted to hurt you. I didn’t think I could give you what you wanted, and it would make us both sad to try. But then we - and you -” Marinette stopped before she started stuttering uncontrollably. She looked away, over his shoulder at the Paris skyline. “I’m not saying this well,” she said. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I just - I care about you a lot, so I want you to know who I am?”

Chat looked kind of bewildered. Okay, maybe very bewildered. “I care about you, too, of course. And I’d be honored to be trusted with your identity.”

Marinette swallowed hard around the lump of anxiety that was suddenly crowding her throat. “Spots off, Tikki,” she whispered. Pink light rose around her, and the sweater she’d been wearing before magic disappeared it weighed heavy on her shoulders. The cuffs slipped down over her fingers, hiding the way they shook from more than cold.

Chat didn’t say anything, for long enough that it start to hurt. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. When he took a step towards her, she flinched, anticipating that his next words would break her. She hadn’t expected her feelings for him to get so out of control. He brought a gloved hand up to her cheek, so feather-light she could barely feel it. “Princess,” he breathed. “My Lady.”

He brought up his other hand to cup her face and ducked in so his forehead was pressed to hers and she couldn’t avoid his gaze. His face was so close that it was hard to read his expression, but he didn’t look angry at all, or like he hated her. “Marinette,” he said, like it was a revelation. “Can I kiss you?”

Marinette blinked at him. This wasn’t going any of the ways she’d expected, and he still wanted to kiss her. She sagged in relief, steadying herself with her hands on his hips. “Yes,” she said.

He kissed her like a man wandering the desert who’d finally found water: desperation and a ravenous need driving his intensity. He kissed her like she was the answer to everything. When she gasped at the onslaught, his tongue dove into her mouth, drinking her in. Her hands on his hips anchored her, steadied her until they broke for breath. “You’re more of a miracle than I ever suspected,” he said, and ran his nose alongside hers. He didn’t seem to want to be parted from her any more than absolutely necessary.

“You’re not mad?”

He ran his hands down her arms, took her hands, kissed her knuckles. “I’m surprised. But I know - I remember when we started.” He pressed her hands to his shoulders and slid his arms around her waist, holding her against him. “You said it wouldn’t be fair to try to be with someone you couldn’t have feelings for. Your sense of fairness is one of the things I love about you, but I’m so, so glad circumstances have changed.”

He’d said love. Oh. “Oh.” She tangled her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and leaned up to kiss him.

His hands slid under her sweater to rest on her waist, and the night air was cold on the small of her back. She pressed closer to him, because he was warm, in so many ways.

Tikki cleared her throat loudly. Marinette broke away from Chat and tucked her face in against his jaw. “I’ll give you two some privacy, but remember that the guard takes a cigarette break up here in half an hour.”

Marinette nodded against Chat’s neck. That was the only trouble with Paris: most of the good, flat roofs had long since been discovered by the building’s residents. Tikki flitted away, and Chat ran a palm up her spine. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “I’m so glad you’re you.”

She let out a breath against his neck, not a laugh or a sob or a sigh but a mix of all of them born of her giddy relief. She kissed him again, and it was softer this time, but his hands were on her skin. She tried to pour her gratitude for his acceptance into the kiss, along with her - affection. The structure that held the door to the stairs down into the building would shield them from the wind, so she nudged him that way with her hands in his hair and her legs moving against him in tiny, suggestive steps.

He took the hint and pressed her against the wall, the stone cold but at least shielding her from the wind. It occurred to her that she’d imagined more talking at this point, but his mouth was hot on hers. His hands roamed her waist, claws prickling against her skin. She clutched his shoulders, drawing him closer. She just wanted to be closer to him, no distance between them. This would be easier in her room, where it was warm and she had a bed, but she’d had to tell him here, like this. He ducked to kiss her neck, and she arched into him, breasts pressing into his chest. He clutched her closer and murmured, “Marinette.” He said it like it was a complete statement unto itself.

“Yes,” she said, and he took it as the blanket encouragement she meant it as. He bit her neck lightly, and she grabbed his ass, and they made out until it was easy to forget the cold. She was starting to get breathless when he next broke away, but tt stole her breath completely when he dropped to his knees. He looked up at her, hands resting on the waistband of her sweatpants. She nodded. He stripped them down, and the cold air hit her like a slap. Her shoulders pressed hard against the wall and her hips arched out, a fact Chat took full advantage of. His mouth was hot, almost burning in contrast to the night around them.

She couldn’t spread her legs too far apart, her sweatpants still around her thighs. It limited his access, but he swirled his tongue around her clit and sucked on it and cradled the backs of her thighs when her knees shook. Her sweater fell down around his face, and she pulled it up, holding it out of the way so she could watch him go down on her.

He looked up, meeting her gaze, and her breath hitched at the intensity in his eyes. He licked her relentlessly until she shuddered and went over, then rested his forehead against the crest of her hip. She let go of her sweater and put a hand on his head. He tugged up her sweatpants. “We don’t have much time,” he mumbled.

“I know,” Marinette said, and her voice wasn’t quite steady.

He stood, still in her space, and she could feel him hard against her. He tucked his face in next to hers, and she could smell herself on him. “I’m so glad you’re you.”

“I’m glad I told you.”

“Let’s skip patrol tonight. Can I take you home?”

“Yeah,” Marinette said. Patrol would be unbearably strange on legs she wasn’t sure yet could hold her weight.

Tikki zoomed back into sight, and the door creaked open. Chat wrapped his arms around her waist and bounded off the roof, extending his baton in midair.

He dropped her off on her balcony and kissed her before bounding off into the night, leaving Marinette blinking in his wake. As far as she was concerned, their conversation wasn’t over.


	17. Love never fails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One last reveal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who was with me for this. It has been an adventure! I'm on uswe.tumblr.com.

Marinette took a long time to fall asleep, torn between happiness at how well the identity reveal had gone and disquiet that it hadn’t been mutual. It left her feeling off-kilter in the morning, slightly fragile as she got ready for school. He obviously - like, he was happy about it, happy that she was herself. So why didn’t he trust her with his identity? Of course, it was his prerogative and whatever. It was still safer for his family probably if no one knew who he was.

She got to school with a few minutes to spare, even with the way she was dragging. Adrien popped out of his chair the moment she came in, startling her. She glanced at Alya, who shrugged.

Adrien stopped in front of his desk and rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at her feet. “Marinette! Um. Hi, good morning. Can I talk to you?”

A couple weeks ago - a couple days ago, even - she wouldn’t have hesitated, would have tripped all over her words in her haste to agree. As it was, she only stammered a little bit as she acquiesced. “Y-yeah, sure. We don’t have long before class, though.”

“It’s important,” he said, and took her hand to lead her out the door.

She followed him, blushing involuntarily at the fact that he was holding her hand. It was only a little bit of a blush, but she’d kind of expected it: an eclipse doesn’t completely erase all traces of other celestial bodies.

Adrien pulled her into the courtyard, even though neither of them had their jackets. He dropped her hand, then fisted both of his hands in his hair and started pacing without so much as looking at her.

“Adrien?”

He startled. “Oh, God. Uh, I’m sorry, Princess, I tried to figure out how I was going to say this, but nothing works.”

Everything stilled. Even the breeze crystallized. A hope she hadn’t even thought to have bloomed in her chest. “Princess?” It came out barely a whisper, but he caught it, and looked at her with wide eyes.

He stepped closer to her, and raised a pleading hand to hover near her elbow, not touching. “Yeah. My Lady, I’m Chat Noir. At your service.”

“Oh,” she said, mind whirling. He liked someone he worked with, she’d heard him. He was Chat Noir, so he worked with Ladybug. He’d liked her, and then he had feelings for her as her, and - how hadn’t she made the connection? How could she have had sex with her years-long crush and not realized? Though he’d been in the same position. The same limbo, and they’d fallen together in perfect synch. She raised her hand and put it on his inner arm, just to see if she was dreaming. He felt solid and warm against the length of her forearm.

His fingers tightened on her arm like he was afraid she’d slip away. “Marinette?”

“Oh, kitty.” She wanted to tell him to have a little faith, that she’d never run away now that they had all of each other. She cupped his cheek in her other hand, running her thumb over his cheekbone. She should have recognized his eyes. She’d been happy enough to drown in them. “Why didn’t you say anything last night?”

He blushed bright red, and his cheek warmed under her hand. His gaze cut away from her and down. “Uh, I got distracted.”

A smile creeped over Marinette’s face, slowly widened to a grin, and then she was laughing. Leaning in, she had to rise to the balls of her feet to kiss his cheek. “Okay, yeah, it was a pretty good distraction. I’m so glad you’re you. Did you know, you were the one I was pining over when you came to visit me that first time?”

His jaw dropped open, and he met her gaze again. “Oh, God, we were pining over each other this whole time.” His free hand had fallen to her hip, taken up residence like it was muscle memory.

Marinette stood on tiptoe again to lean in close to his ear and whisper one last confession. Overhead, the bell rang. They kissed with a tenderness born of having discarded all of their disguises, and it was worth the tardy slips.

> _ 1 Corinthians 13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. _

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Pitfalls Of Being a Wingman](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8691937) by [BullySquadess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BullySquadess/pseuds/BullySquadess)




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